Hengistbury Head Outdoors hits 98% online bookings from day one with Sailia

About Hengistbury Head Outdoors

Hengistbury Head Outdoors (HHO) sits on one of the most special stretches of the south coast, where Christchurch Harbour meets the sea. For generations it’s been a much loved location for outdoor enthusiasts. 

In the last three years a brilliant group of volunteers have raised £800k to breathe new life into the site, the team is reinvesting in facilities, expanding its programme of experiences, and opening Hengistbury Head up to more people than ever before.

A relaunch on this scale needed an operating system to match. HHO chose Sailia.

The Challenge

Most operators come to Sailia to escape a system that's holding them back. HHO's situation was different, a blank slate making the goals ambiguous. 

Relaunching the site meant that everything had to work from day one. Bookings, payments, waivers, staff scheduling, memberships, communications, reporting. There's no quiet season to iron out the kinks, there was a strict deadline for when the system needed to be up and running. There was the other technical challenge that a booking and management system would be completely new to the team, there’d be no reference point meaning that everyone had to learn and be up to speed with the system before launch. 

They needed a single system that could:

• Run every part of the operation, from courses and sessions to hire and events, in one place.

• Deal with complex memberships

• Manage classes with varying instructors

• Deal with a membership run gym

• Launch fast, without months of setup or a team of consultants.

• Give visitors a booking experience as good as the experiences themselves.

• Scale with the site as the reinvestment brings new activities and more visitors.

• Be backed by a support team who understand experience businesses

The Solution

HHO launched with Sailia as its operating system from the start. This meant that there was no intermediately stage with a patchwork of tools. 

Key advantages included:

• Everything in one place Bookings, memberships, donations, payments, waivers, staffing, CRM, and communications run through a single dashboard. The team spends its time delivering experiences, not switching between systems.

• A booking experience visitors love Customers book, pay, and sign waivers in one clean flow, on any device. ‘The public find it incredibly easy to book through Sailia, and our conversion rate is a lot higher than we expected’. 

• Launch-day speed The whole operation was set up and taking memberships in days with the Sailia team alongside HHO throughout onboarding.

• Built to grow As the £800k investment brings new activities, facilities, and programmes online, adding them to Sailia takes minutes. 

The Results

Since launch, 98% of customers have been booking online. This has led to the need for only a single person to run the whole operation through Sailia rather than a team that would ordinarily be required. This has freed the team to focus on what the investment was raised for: getting more people outdoors. The directors couldn't recommend Sailia more other alternative systems they looked at such as FuseMetrix, Beyonk and Roller.

What could have been the riskiest part of the relaunch, the operational backbone, has instead been the smoothest.

Testimonials

"We couldn't afford to get the basics wrong. Sailia meant we launched with an incredibly easy to use system with everything working from day one."

- Jess, Site Manager, Hengistbury Head Outdoors

"The whole operation runs through one system. Bookings, memberships, waivers, staffing, the lot. It's freed us up to focus on the experiences. And the finances are brilliant, it’s amazing how much time the system saves."

- Bill, Director, Hengistbury Head Outdoors