Background

With an innovative idea to set-up bookable BBQ spots in country parks, Hampshire County Council (HCC) started taking online bookings to increase efficiency and the public’s access to some recreational features and facilities. With four outdoor activity centres in operation, HCC needed an effective system in place to manage its multi-site bookings. Having already implemented BookingLive for country park bookings in September 2013, the Council made the decision to roll the system out to Calshot Activities Centre.

Owned and managed by the Council, the Centre is the largest of Hampshire’s outdoor activity centres, offering a wide range of exciting water and land-based activities. Historic hangars accommodate a state of the art climbing complex, the only indoor velodrome in Southern England and a dry ski slope. With this range of features, Calshot is able to provide activities all year round to the public. Although the centre provides a huge amount of activities, only 15% are currently bookable online via their website

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Challenges & Needs

  • Calshot is run by Hampshire County Council, meaning that they have policies they have to meet when using third party software. This was a challenge for them when searching for a booking software provider that could meet all of their requirements
  • A lot of their staffs’ time were taken up to manage their current booking system
  • They can only take bookings during the day due to the paper-based system they were using meaning they couldn’t take online payments.

The Booking Journey

Choose Product

Add Details

Make Payment

Solutions

  • Integrating with one of our payment gateways so Calshot can take online payments securely
  • Calshot’s customers are able to fill out medical forms online, saving staff time
  • BookingLive were able to set up a custom system, allowing Calshot’s new booking system to meet all policy requirements
  • Calshot is busy all year round, but the nature of the activities offered changes with the seasons. BookingLive enables Calshot to market activities according to the time of year.

Conclusion to Challenges

  • Customers are able to book with ease, from any device at any time. As a result of this, the majority of their bookings are not made at 7 or 8 in the evening
  • Calshot had a white-labelled system that met all of their policies that they were able to edit when the need to
  • Customers can make card payments online. Calshot also implemented some self-service terminals in the centre for customers to book
  • They have increased accessibility for their customers without the need for additional paper or staff resources.

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