Booking Leisure gives me high blood pressure
Leisure Centres are a vital part of the Local Government service offering. They offer a community hub, they deliver key services unavailable for many who cannot afford private gym membership and they help us to try and deal with the increasing obesity epidemic in the uk (over 60% of adults in England and wales classified as overweight or living with obesity in 2023–2024, an upward trend and around 1 in 5 children aged 10-11 identified as obese). Despite their importance they are criminally underfunded and often underused which means they cannot generate sufficient income to support themselves.
Why does this warrant a news story from me you may ask. Well, here at Zipporah we have been undertaking increasing efforts to do more about health and wellbeing. As part of that process we have been actively encouraging all our team to get involved including wellness courses and to get involved in more physical exercise. Of particular relevance here would be our Padel, Squash and Badminton competitions we have within the organisation.
Padel is a newer sport and one that you generally won't find in a council leisure centre, whilst badminton and squash are often available in leisure centres and it makes sense to add to their coffers. Its such a shame then when the experience from the private sector and council leisure centres is so different. Booking padel is a simple process, viewing court availability. However, trying to book at a leisure centre operated by a local authority, has been a logistical nightmare. I live within a short drive of two of the largest cities in Wales and am surrounded by an abundance of councils who have facilities I should be able to book. In reality, the processes are so long and convoluted it is a barrier. Last weekend I wanted to book two courts and across the 4 authorities that surround me or the team that we could all easily get to, give me some very difficult experiences:
Council 1 - They did have online bookings but in order to look at availability across the city (around 8 Leisure Centres) I needed to switch from site to site. It totalled about 30 clicks and when I went back to book the centre that was nearest us all, the slot had gone as it took me so long to look at the other. Yes, you could argue I should have just selected the first one I saw but maybe a view across all centres shouldn't be something out of reach.
Council 2 - No online visibility at all. So I had to ring around the 3 centres available. This required 3 individual calls to each centre as the staff weren't able to see availability outside their own centre.
Council 3 - Online bookings available but it errored straight away.
Council 4 - Offered the most exciting view where I could see availability at their two centres but that was where the excitement ended. The booking process would only allow me to select one court into my basket so I couldn't book easily but accepting that I tried to proceed and every time the session failed. Then I couldn't select another court or remove anything from my basket. After 2 hours of failed attempts and clearing cache and creating different user accounts I decided to call the centre. After 30 minutes on hold I gave up.
All in all the cost of calls and time far outweighed the saving of a lower cost court.
Is this really the best we can do? Councils are consistently striving for "transformation" yet in some of the most basic areas, where interaction levels should be high and the opportunity to generate revenue should be paramount they are happy to treat it as a box ticking exercise. I know a lot of these centres are now in a partnership with the private sector but surely the council has some control to see services improve or is leisure like our water companies and trains where its not properly policed to ensure money that is being taken from the public purse is spent properly. I noted with some dismay that many of these systems were operating from the same leisure provider and whilst I won't name names, we will all know the same issues of sharing information that have existed over and over again.
It's time for councils to start driving the agenda and having an expectation that their residents receive a suitable service. That will see a rise in use and therefore revenue which is for the benefit of everyone.
If you are tired of being unable to simply make and manage bookings through your leisure system, talk to us about our APIs and how they can bring all this data into a suitable view for your staff and citizens to be able to book. Your system could do so much more than you think!
