How Keep Sailing accelerated its growth and streamlined operations with Sailia

About Keep Sailing

Keep Sailing is a not-for-profit organisation operating multiple watersports centres across London and the South East. They specialise in providing RYA-certified sailing, powerboating, wing-surfing and SUP courses for all ages. Over time, they’ve grown significantly, developed instructor training and group booking programmes, and built a reputation for accessible fun and high-quality tuition.

The Challenge

As Keep Sailing expanded across sites and activities, their booking, staffing and operations infrastructure struggled to keep pace. They faced issues including:

• Multiple sites, multiple activities (sailing, powerboating, wing-surfing) each with different pricing, schedules and participant types.

• Complex group bookings (school cohorts, birthday groups, corporate groups) requiring manual intervention and separate admin flows.

• Instructor training, hires, memberships and voucher systems that were loosely connected or required spreadsheets and separate tools.

• A need for a system that could scale operations without adding disproportionate administrative burden, and deliver a consistent customer experience across locations.

• A system that could give the clubs they run at insight into the courses they run and discounts for their members.

The Solution

Keep Sailing adopted Sailia as their central operations and booking platform across all sites. Key elements:

• Unified Booking Engine: All activities, sites and customer types (individual, group, corporate) are managed through one platform.

• Group Booking Tools: Dedicated flows to handle multi-participant bookings (schools, birthdays, corporate teambuilding), automatically collecting participant details, waivers, payments and scheduling.

• Memberships & Instructor Training: Integrated modules to manage instructor qualification tracking, course bookings, renewals, and member communications.

• Multi-Site Dashboard & Reporting: Centralised visibility across all locations. Bookings, utilisation, revenue, staffing, giving management the insight to allocate resources, identify high-performing sites, and optimise pricing.

• Support & Implementation: Support from Sailia’s team helped customise flows, configure group pricing tiers and train staff across each location.

The Results

Since adopting Sailia, Keep Sailing has seen measurable improvements across their entire operation:

• 33% increase in revenue within the first season.

• 25% reduction in admin time across their teaching and operations teams.

• Higher customer satisfaction, with a faster, more user-friendly booking experience.

• Faster scaling, enabling new partner clubs to join seamlessly.

Sailia has become central to Keep Sailing’s mission, enabling them to deliver professional, scalable training while maintaining their friendly, community-driven approach.

Testimonial

“The support is phenomenal. Whether it’s fixing an issue or customising the system, the team is quick and efficient, we couldn’t be happier.”
— Freddie, Director, Keep Sailing

“I’d say the best rostering system I’ve experienced in the industry to date.”
— Ben, Director, Keep Sailing

Why Keep Sailing chose Sailia

• Scalability & Flexibility: Able to take multiple sites and multiple activities and manage them within one platform.

• Group-Friendly: Tools tailored for schools, birthday groups and corporate bookings.

• Operational Insight: Dashboard & reporting support good decision-making across the network.

• Strong Support: A team that partnered closely in onboarding, configuration and ongoing support.