Case study: Walthamstow School for ...

Romi Jalil, Business Manager at Walthamstow School for Girls spoke to us about his experience of working with BookingsGuru and how the service has benefited his school lettings.

“As Business Manager at Walthamstow School, I oversee the leadership team responsible for the finances, HR and operational management of the school. We are proud to work closely with the local community and offering our facilities out to a wide variety of groups and having a lettings system in place was hugely important to this side of our business.

“Initially, the lettings process here at Walthamstow was relatively sluggish – although we were playing host to a variety of different hirer groups, we were only averaging £20,000 a year and not seeing the impact we wanted. As a small team wanting to increase our lettings, we knew we did not have the staffing capacity to execute it. So we began looking for an all-encompassing managed service that could help get us off the ground – and BookingsGuru was the perfect piece to the puzzle.

“Having worked with Kajima and BookingsGuru for just over five years now, we have seen a major improvement in our lettings services. With expertise in marketing, strategy development and complete administrative services, BookingsGuru has been a brilliant solution to taking our lettings to the next level, while alleviating strain on our resource.

“We have a day-to-day contact at BookingsGuru that deals with all our bookings. This was critical for us. Because they are in a position to come down to the school, see the facilities we have to offer, and understand how the school operates, they can provide the personal touch when speaking to us about what would work well for both hirers and the school itself.

“One of our main goals was to broaden opportunities for hirers and publicise our facilities to a larger audience. Before partnering with Kajima, we had no web presence or marketing strategy to promote our lettings so it was a challenge to attract new hirers.  Then the team at BookingsGuru came along and knew exactly what we needed to help create our website. They took photos of our different rooms, including our Grand Hall and Theatre, and created descriptions for each facility to use on the website which was very beneficial for prospective hirers to see exactly what they would be getting.

“Through the forward-thinking expertise from the BookingsGuru team, we have gained an array of diverse and interesting groups which has been really fun to see. Recently, we had filming take place in our Grand Hall with some of the reality stars from ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ – it was fantastic to receive some recognition for our facility and it created a great buzz with the pupils throughout our school.

“The BookingsGuru team and Kajima Community have helped us generate and capitalise on countless new opportunities, which otherwise would have been untapped. This has helped increase our income average to around £100,000 – a huge difference to our initial outcomes. They take care of managing our lettings, allowing me to focus my time on the core educational business. I could not recommend them more highly!”

Watch our short video to find out what a Guru can do for you and your school lettings – www.bookingsguru.co.uk.