Legend Club Management Systems has launched an innovative new online bookings service with Will to Win, a tennis organisation working alongside the Park Tennis Partnership Ltd (PTP). Will to Win is an organisation set up to promote the coaching and participation of tennis in the royal parks across London. The new system means that the public can now view court availability online before booking at either of London’s Regents and Hyde Park tennis centres.

Both centres have been working with Legend since installing the Legend solution at the beginning of 2006. The installation of Legend at the time replaced an outdated bookings database and disparate point of sale system. Since then, Legend has developed its relationship with the PTP, offering a powerful online solution to assist with court bookings, viewing class schedules and showing availability of resources such as coaches, lessons and courses.

The online bookings service for Will to Win is established on the back of the Legend web bookings solution. The unique aspect of the Legend solution is that all elements, including web bookings, are produced by Legend and integrated into a single Legend solution, which provides significant performance and cost advantages versus using 3rd party products.

Alastair Mcleod, Will to Win Centres’ Manager, comments: “Introducing Legend has highlighted to us how inefficiently we were functioning with our previous bookings system. What we needed was a bookings system with superior technology but with the flexibility to suit our needs, and Legend could provide us with both. The Legend web page initiative will completely change the way we process court bookings, and should reduce the volume of calls enquiring about availability by up to 80% and at the same time improve our service to customers significantly.”

The online solution provides benefits to the public that will improve their bookings experience, yet still allow the centre to maintain control over the bookings schedule. For instance, pay and play users can book the day before a court is required, and privilege card holders are able to book up to seven days in advance. The Legend technology provides ‘real time’ data that shows players looking on the park’s web page exactly how many courts are available at any given time. Being ‘real time’, the system efficiently updates the availability status the moment courts are taken, with changes to any timetables of alternative courses and coaching also reflected immediately.

The Centres are looking to enhance the Legend bookings system further, by shortly introducing online registration. In addition, players will also be able to purchase products via the centres’ website using Legend’s point of sale and online payments technology. Ingrid Hay, Legend Operations Director, concludes: “We have worked closely with PTP to provide a bespoke solution that is capable of coping with the demands of these extremely busy centre’s at their peak times. The web page solution will free up reception staff to focus on serving customers better with fewer bookings telephone calls. We are very excited to be serving businesses such as Will to Win and the Park Tennis Partnership with Legend’s web solution