Tune in to our inspiring conversation with Recreation Coordinator Alexa of Queenstown Lakes District Council as she shares her unique insights on the massive growth their holiday programme has experienced this past year. She provides us the tell-all about what it takes to be a pro activity provider and reveals the epic turnaround in her day-to-day operations since transitioning to Enrolmy.
The Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) holiday programme has experienced remarkable growth and success over 2023. Consistently increasing their credit card payments and bookings, which has already seen a 20-child increase this summer! With a comprehensive range of adventure-filled activities and phenomenal staff, it’s clear why they are a popular choice for parents in Queenstown during holiday periods. We had the privilege to speak with Alexa, the passionate and delightful Recreation Programmes Coordinator at the QLDC, who credits this increased success to switching to Enrolmy.
Discover Alexa's journey to her pivotal role at the council, her daily responsibilities as an activity provider, and the factors that prompted their essential shift from a manual, clunky booking system to our streamlined management software. Explore how she and her team revolutionised their booking processes, leading the council to gain a competitive edge in Queenstown's saturated market.
In a competitive market like Queenstown, where there are now plenty of holiday programmes available, being fully booked every day is massive for us.
Alexa's Role in the Queenstown Lakes District Council
Chasing her Passion
Alexa's journey to running the holiday programme for the Queenstown Lakes District Council reflects a true passion for sports and recreation. Her adventure kicked off when she made the move from the North Island to pursue physical education at the University of Otago in Dunedin. She loved her time there and was fuelled with determination to turn her love for sports and rec into a career. So when the opportunity struck, she joined the QLDC event centre as a lifeguard. This role led her to transition through many different sectors within the event centre, until leaving for a year to work as a sports coordinator at a local high school. Alexa thrived in this role, as she reminisced:
It was always fun and we had some fantastic road trips together, travelling [all over central Otago and Southland just so these kids could play sports.
This experience was instrumental in helping Alexa realise her passion and skillset for organising safe and fun activities for kids- propelling her towards her current role at the council. Alexa has been the recreation coordinator for the QLDC for four years now, with an itinerary of tasks consisting of organising sports leagues, climbing wall sessions, and aquatic and gym programmes.
It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster getting here but I love it, I really enjoy what I do.
Running the QLDC Holiday Programme
A huge chunk of her role at the council is managing the admin, planning and delivery of the council’s hugely popular holiday programme, an enjoyable yet often challenging component of their overall operations. Alexa highlighted that despite increased competition in the area, their holiday program has always remained very busy. She attributes this to their programme hours, spanning from 8 am to 5:30 pm, which may offer more convenience and flexibility for parents than programmes with shorter hours, such as 10 am to 2 pm.
We’ve become more and more aware of other players in the field, so we have to make sure we’ve still got a point of difference
When it comes to boosting enrolments and utilising other avenues beyond word of mouth, Alexa confidently says they’re doing well enough that a huge amount of promotion isn’t needed. Sometimes they even go as far as removing online posts about the programme way ahead of time, just to prevent parents from feeling like they missed out.
[Over the summer period] we had a huge influx of brand new children who have never been in the programme
When asked about how the QLDC accommodated their recent surge in new enrolments, Alexa explained that their summer holiday programme has worked really well at adapting to this. The council has a large amount of trained casual staff on hand to assist with busy periods, and they’re able to over-roster to compensate for any last minute staffing changes. However, one of the major challenges Alexa identified during busy periods was of course, managing this roster. This involves adjusting sessions to accommodate to last minute staff sickness, injuries or changes in programme capacities. And in the past, these were made even more difficult by the council's reliance on manual processing and record-keeping.
The Limitations of a Manual Booking system
Before transitioning to an online booking management system like Enrolmy, Alexa and her team relied on cumbersome manual processes. That involved extensive paperwork, inputting bookings into excel spreadsheets and handwriting individual forms. Each booking form had to be entered manually into the system, printed out, and kept as hard copies. This not only prolonged the process of tracking outstanding payments and reconciling fees from parents, but made organising health and safety forms, much harder than it needed to be.
Alexa also noted that because their holiday programme has always traditionally been quite busy their old-school management system slowed them down, and there was always a chance for human error. This inevitably resulted in numerous mistakes made by Alexa and her team.
We were just making so many mistakes because of processing hundreds of bookings manually. It just wasn’t working for us anymore.
With their holiday programme’s proven track record of significant growth, particularly during the last peak summer season, Alexa and her team needed a more efficient way to update booking information and add last-minute enrolments on the fly. Their current manual processes limited their ability to adjust staffing levels in response to changes in programme schedules, taking into account unexpected absences or injuries, and incorporating on-call staff as necessary.
As the council's holiday programme grew, it became increasingly impractical to continue their operations the way they were. It was clear to Alexa and her team that they needed a more efficient solution. That's when they decided to take the leap and convert to Enrolmy’s booking management software.
How Enrolmy Software Transformed the Council’s Operations
There are so many functions within Enrolmy that ticked all our boxes. It was a game changer as soon as we made the switch.
By “ticking all the boxes” with its wide variety of functions, Enrolmy was able to remove the biggest obstacles preventing the QLDC from becoming the leading Queenstown holiday program hub they are today. Alexa gave us valuable insight into some of the key functions of our software that she observed instantly improved the efficiency of how they run their holiday programme.
It caters to the specific criteria and needs of OSCAR providers
Alexa explained that as an OSCAR provider, the council has specific extra requirements for their bookings, including health and safety information and safety forms. Enrolmy delivers these forms electronically, making it easy for parents to fill them out and submit them online. This ensures the council keep accurate records of all attendees and follow up with any necessary safety information before confirming a booking.
Enrolmy helped remove human error from their processing
This was huge for us. We used to make so many mistakes when manually entering hundreds of bookings, but now fixing any issues is quick and easy.
By removing the reliance on handwritten forms and manual data entry, Alexa and her team significantly reduced the occurrence of human errors throughout the booking process. Enrolmy effectively addressed this by giving parents the autonomy to input their information directly into the system, reducing the likelihood of staff transcription errors - which is something their team attests to. The system also employs validation checks and prompts to ensure that all required fields were completed accurately, mitigating the risk of incomplete or incorrect bookings.
Enhanced parent autonomy and customer experience
The autonomy that parents now have in making bookings is huge. They can do it anytime, even in the middle of the night. It broke down all the barriers we had with our old system.
A very important function for the QLDC was the autonomy that parents now have when making bookings. With Enrolmy, all they needed to do is set the criteria, tick all the boxes and push ‘live’ - and parents have complete control and flexibility over their bookings. It reduced their administration ten-fold, as she explains all of this is done without the input of a member of staff. Parents can book any time and even allocate their own outstanding credits to invoices - without the need to physically go into the event centre and wait for their reception team to be free.
The customer experience has greatly improved since implementing Enrolmy. With the click of a button you can easily fix things right in front of their eyes.
Alexa and her team can now easily rectify any booking errors whether they were made by staff or parents. Enrolmy’s help centre, support team and user-friendly interface provides the ability to fix issues promptly, removing any uncertainty if something goes array during the booking process. Alexa explained this created a much nicer experience for their customers which they’ve seen incentivises them to come back!
We’ve noticed so many newbies that we’ve never seen before in our programmes, particularly in the summer break.
Moreover, word-of-mouth recommendations have played a crucial role in driving new enrolments and re-bookings for the council. Satisfied parents share their positive experiences with friends and family, leading to an influx of new participants in the programme. Despite increased competition from other holiday programmes in Queenstown, Alexa and her team are really happy with the way things are going, stating they continue to see high numbers and consistently fully booked sessions every single day.
Helped maximise efficiency during busy summer periods
During the hectic summer months, Alexa and her team extensively utilised Enrolmy's ability to easily adjust booking details and update rosters. With constantly changing capacities and staff falling sick, their team appreciates being able to swiftly make updates such as adding extra staff or assigning work on additional days. Not only this but it offers the practical ability to customise the number of bookings they can accept for each day and close spaces if a programme is not fully booked. And now that the summer period has come to a close, the QLDC holiday programme has continued to surpass its goals of getting back to their pre-COVID booking numbers!
Smooth Sailing: Their Seamless Transition to Enrolmy Software
The Onboarding and Implementation Process
It was a really easy and straightforward experience
From outlining their specific needs based on OSCAR criteria to ensuring all necessary functionalities that catered to their needs were included, Alexa described Enrolmy’s onboarding process with QLDC as really straightforward. Their business support and finance team facilitated a comprehensive approach to understanding and seamlessly integrating the new online booking system. A pivotal factor in this smooth transition was Enrolmy's responsive support team who provided invaluable assistance for any queries or issues that arose, as well as its detailed step-by-step instructions and help centre.
Your help system is just invaluable. I might not remember something off the top of my head, but you can type something [into the help centre] and straight away it's got step by step [instructions] and screenshots.
This level of support not only simplified the implementation phase but also ensured ongoing ease of use when learning Enrolmy's powerful features. Its user-friendly interface received special mention for being visually appealing without overwhelming users. Alexa also touched upon how quickly it became apparent that Enrolmy would meet their needs perfectly:
It was super functional... there wasn't anything that we needed to create or reimagine; it was already existing within Enrolmy.
Embracing Change: Parents Reaction to Enrolmy
No news is good news... they just kind of adapted straightaway.
According to Alexa, there were concerns about potential confusion or resistance from parents accustomed to previous manual booking processes. However, these fears were unfounded as parents adapted remarkably well. Alexa recalled the first day they were about to push live, she was refreshing her email and waiting for her inbox to be lodged with questions from parents but they never came!
It was almost freakish how smooth it went... bizarre almost
This smooth adjustment to the new software might have been due to parent’s prior exposure to Enrolmy within other sports and holiday programmes, given that nearly 60% of New Zealand providers use it. Nonetheless, Alexa and her team’s proactive communication before the big launch, played a significant role in preparing parents for this change. She recalled that they tried to set parents up for success from the get go, sending them as much information as possible through emails with links to the Enrolmy help desk and how to set up their account.
A Worthy Investment for Councils
[Enrolmy] was a huge call to make for us. But it's definitely paid off.
Alexa shared that their initial hesitation for implementing Enrolmy stemmed from already having an online POS system in place that handled various bookings, including gym memberships and school programs. She recognised that this may be a point of reluctance for other councils who still haven’t moved forward with an online booking solution such as Enrolmy.
It may not be across all councils, but a huge barrier for us [before moving to Enrolmy] was that we already had an online POS system.
This existing system was clunky and had an outdated interface, lacking the specialised features they needed for properly managing these tasks. They realised it was neither feasible or in the programme’s best interest to continue operations the way they were, especially with their consistent increase in numbers. That was when the QLDC decided to make the huge call to bring in another third party provider, Enrolmy.
One of the most daunting challenges was the realisation that introducing another online booking system would mean severing ties with their current setup - a significant investment given the loss of historical credits and other data. However, Alexa and her team recognised that the perks of Enrolmy’s functionality and the lack of issues it presents for their parents would far outweigh that there was no cross-over from their previous membership system.
We were in such a bad place with our previous methods. So to go from that, to having this incredibly functional user-friendly system...we just wouldn’t look back.
As Alexa continues to supercharge her delivery of safe and engaging activities within the holiday programme, Enrolmy will undoubtedly play a critical role in supporting the Queenstown Lakes District Council’s success. This case study serves as a testament to the power of digital tools in transforming sluggish booking management processes into organisational prowess. To see and hear the positive impact Enrolmy has made is incredibly rewarding, and motivates us to keep innovating and providing features that allow other councils to achieve their goals. Enrolmy has become a trusted partner for the Queenstown Lakes District Council, and we are so excited to see how Alexa and her team will further utilise our software to deliver exceptional programmes.
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