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When One Booking System Isn’t Enough: Why Consolidation Is Becoming EssentialDiscover how organisations are consolidating booking systems to reduce stress and simplify operations.
Why We’re Sharing This Blog
We know venues, estates, and event teams are under increasing pressure — balancing limited resources, rising expectations, and the need to deliver seamless experiences for customers and staff alike.
That’s why we’ve created this blog, inspired by the real challenges we see every day when organisations manage multiple booking systems. It shares practical insights, examples from real venues, and strategies from authorities like Wokingham Borough Council to help you simplify bookings, reduce admin headaches, and improve customer experience.
Our goal is to give you ideas and tools to make your operations smoother, support your staff, and create a consistent, engaging experience across all your spaces — without adding extra stress to your day-to-day workload.
Author, Emily Walker
Customer Success Manager at Switch
Havign been in the Events Industry for 13 years, and having listened to so many customer experiences as Customer Success Manager at Switch, Emily shares her wealth of knowledge and experience in this blog.
It’s the end of the week, and the team is racing to keep up. One colleague is checking availability for a weekend social event, another is reconciling payments from the Half Term Club, and a third is updating spreadsheets for meeting room bookings. Across leisure facilities, community halls, and corporate spaces, bookings are coming in from every direction — each managed in a different system.
Individually, everything works. Collectively, it doesn’t.
Across sectors, organisations are being asked to do more with less. Budgets are tightening. Teams are restructuring. Services are centralising. Estates are expanding or merging. Expectations around transparency and reporting are higher than ever.
And yet behind the scenes, many organisations are still running multiple booking systems that were never designed to work together. Leisure facilities on one platform. Corporate rooms in Outlook. Community spaces on spreadsheets. Events managed somewhere else entirely.
What once felt manageable slowly becomes complicated.
Why Organisations Are Consolidating Booking Systems
Consolidation isn’t about following a technology trend. It’s about responding to operational reality.
We see it when authorities restructure — particularly in the current conversation around two-tier local government. As responsibilities shift and services are redefined, systems must adapt to reflect a new operational model.
For example, authorities such as Ruschliffe Borough Council are navigating how best to provide compelling, community-focused facilities within a changing landscape. For two-tier authorities, this presents a real opportunity: to share best practice, streamline operations and ensure technology supports collaboration rather than fragmentation.
But this isn’t just local government.
It happens when:
• A university centralises bookings across faculties
• A leisure trust takes on additional venues
• A charity merges with another organisation
• A housing association brings community spaces under one team
• Hotels and conference centres expand services and events
• A corporate estates function becomes nationally managed
The organisation evolves. The systems often don’t.
The Hidden Cost of “Making It Work”
Very rarely does someone say, “Our booking systems are a disaster.”
Instead, teams adapt:
- Export reports and combine them manually
- Keep backup spreadsheets “just in case”
- Reconcile income line by line at month-end
- Answer calls from customers who can’t see real-time availability
- Train new staff differently at each site
It works. Until it doesn’t.
• Reporting for leadership takes days
• Restructures magnify inconsistencies
• Finance questions the numbers
• Staff capacity is stretched one step too far
The strain isn’t dramatic. It’s cumulative.
One Database. Clearer Decisions
When booking data lives in separate systems, leadership never quite sees the whole picture.
A unified platform — or at the very least, connected systems — creates:
- Accurate utilisation visibility
- Transparent income tracking
- Consistent pricing structures
- Reliable, real-time reporting
- Confidence in decision-making
For two-tier authorities in particular, consolidating proven technology offers more than efficiency. It enables shared standards, consistent community experiences, and clearer accountability across borough and county services. It becomes a foundation for best practice — not just administration.
Can One System Really Do It All?
It’s an honest question — and one we’re asked regularly.
Historically, organisations adopted specialist systems:
- One for leisure
- One for events
- One for room bookings
- One for invoicing
Sometimes that still makes sense. Not every organisation needs one single system. Not every consolidation is straightforward.
At Switch, we work with this reality every day.
For example, Wokingham Borough Council have taken consolidation in stride. Their leisure and community offering is wide-ranging — from paddleboarding, wall climbing and archery, through to events like paint-and-sip sessions, laser light shows, summer clubs and even a Santa Grotto — all the way through to meeting bookings and corporate room management.
Through careful planning, Switch has helped them bring these services together in one platform. The result? Staff spend less time reconciling bookings and more time focusing on delivering excellent experiences. Customers enjoy consistency and simplicity across all touchpoints. Leadership sees the full picture in real time.
Sometimes one system is the answer. Sometimes smarter integration is. The aim is to reduce friction, not add complexity.
How Do You Know It’s Time to Review?
It’s rarely triggered by one big moment. It’s usually a series of small questions:
- Why does it take so long to produce one report?
- Why are we still manually reconciling payments?
- Why can’t customers see availability themselves?
- Why do different sites operate differently?
- If we grow again, how much harder will this become?
If your organisational structure has changed significantly in recent years, your systems may need to catch up.
What We See Every Day
At Switch, we work with organisations managing complex estates — community venues, sports facilities, meeting rooms, event spaces — often across multiple sites and departments.
The biggest shift when systems are simplified isn’t technical. It’s human.
• Teams feel calmer
• Finance feels reassured
• Managers trust their data
• Spreadsheets quietly disappear
There’s less firefighting. Less second-guessing. Less “managing around” the system.
And that matters. Most estates and operational teams aren’t trying to transform the world with software. They just want tools that support the way they actually work.
Consolidation Is About Reducing Friction
Unifying — or intelligently connecting — booking systems isn’t about chasing the latest platform. It’s about reducing friction that’s built up over time.
• Giving teams breathing space
• Giving leadership clarity
• Giving customers consistency
Sometimes one system is the answer. Sometimes smarter integration is.
Either way, the aim is the same:
- Remove the headaches
- Support the people doing the work
- Make the operation feel manageable again
And now — the next challenge for many organisations is convincing the powers that be that one system is best, and deciding which system that needs to be. That’s the conversation that shapes the future of how your venues, teams, and customers experience your services.
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