When Stratford District Council in New Zealand opened the doors to its new pool complex, Wai O Rua -Stratford Aquatic Centre last month, it also heralded the arrival of an advanced new leisure management system that would benefit recreation and event management across the district.
Not only does the $20 million facility offer a raft of new pools, a zero-depth splash pad and double the capacity of the TSB Pool Complex it replaced, but visitors were also greeted by the Envibe system, developed by Jonas Leisure to make memberships, bookings and accessing recreation simple.
Stratford District Council Customer and Leisure Services Manager Andrea Mathews says Envibe has made life easier for staff and has been so well received that the council now plans to implement it across the library and information centre in the new year. After that, the council’s admin building will have it implemented to support public bookings of community venues, such as the War Memorial Centre.
“Basically, we’re introducing it slowly in stages,” Andrea says. “We did the pool first, the library and i-Site are next for event bookings, and then the new year will bring the venue booking system where people will be able to book our sports fields, halls, and other bookable facilities.”
With recreational user numbers finally returning to pre-Covid levels, and the pool catering better to Stratford District’s demographics, the benefits on an efficient booking system are quickly becoming clear.
“People can book into group fitness classes, and we’ve seen a huge uptake with that. We’re definitely getting a lot of feedback about how much simpler it is, so much easier. Because it links to the council’s online Customer Portal, they can see exactly what they can book into and also if they need to top up their multi-visit pass or their membership is expired – they can see all that and do it all in one space.
“We used to have a lot of people turning up at around 4 pm to join a class and we would sometimes have to turn them away because the classes were full. Now with Envibe they can see what’s coming up and which classes are fully booked so they time their visits and we’re not having to deal with the disappointment as much.”
The new pool is well-suited to cater to all, with seniors and families with young children a key focus. The old pool had colder water and a uniformity in design that restricted who could use it. The new complex, however, is altogether different.
“We’ve gone from having three pools, that didn’t really vary much in depth or in the ways we could use them, to a purposefully built complex that has a main pool, a learn-to-swim pool, a toddlers’ pool, an indoor splash pad, and our programme pool, which is a bit of a hybrid pool,” Andrea says.
“And we’ve now got things like underfloor heating in the changing rooms. These days, everyone has that, so now we get to benefit from those features too.”
Another attractive feature of Envibe is its ease of use and communications functionality. This is especially important among the senior population, with add-ons like SMS trigger messaging lined up for use in the future to inform those without internet about things such as changes in class times.
“A lot of our messaging is on Facebook at the moment, and we sometimes get ’Well, I don’t look at Facebook.’ If we had to do a pool closure for whatever reason, people wouldn’t always get the notification. We haven’t had to do anything like that yet, but if that happens in future, we will be able to reach people straight away through Envibe with both email and SMS messages.”
Andrea says there was some initial concern among staff about how easy it would be to transition to a new system. However, she says the process was painless, with the Jonas Leisure team providing support with setup, demonstrating the benefits of the platform and helping to ensure all the necessary processes were ready to go ahead of Wai O Rua – Stratford Aquatic Centre’s opening.
“The Jonas team have been fantastic. We went to them with a really short timeframe – a lot shorter than they would normally do – and it still worked really well. They were fantastic at supporting us and being able to get it implemented on time. For me, that is something that I feel is really important for people to know – the system is great, but also you need to know you’ve got that support when setting it up.”
Happy customers at Wai O Rua – Stratford Aquatic Centre.
