NEWS28 July 2022

Playwaze improves the holiday experience for over 120,000 children

Playwaze (a SETsquared Surrey Alumni), has now received over 120,000 bookings for the 2022 Holiday activities and Food (HAF) programme.

The Holiday Activities and Food Programme is a government-funded programme which aims to decrease the holiday experience gap for children from disadvantaged families. These children are less likely to have access to organised out-of-school activities and are more likely to experience social isolation.

Playwaze has built a fully comprehensive off the shelf digital solution that gives organisers all the tools needed to run a HAF programme, partnering with multiple organisations to deliver the programmes for their different local regions. Playwaze sets up an exclusive network for each organisation, enabling an overview of all activity providers and data from their activities. Everything needed for reporting is in one place.

The HAF programme was piloted between 2018 and 2020 and last year it was rolled out to 120 local authorities. In 2022, that number has increased to more than 252. Playwaze began their roll out with the Hertfordshire sports partnership in the Easter holidays of 2021.The sports partnership used the Playwaze search and book technology to bring their programme to life digitally. For the summer and winter programmes of 2021 Playwaze built a new and improved version of the onboarding system  for organisations to run their programmes. Across the five organisations they worked with, they engaged over 300 activity providers taking more than 100,000 bookings with over 400,000 activity finder searches and over 120,000 children participated.

Playwaze has partnered with multiple organisations all over the UK to facilitate the 2022 programme in their different local regions. Bookings can come in very quickly. The Herts Sports Partnership, for example, recently took over 10,000 bookings via Playwaze in just 3 hours.

Rupert Jenner of Playwaze says,

“It’s easy for providers to set up their activities and make them available to book. They can even share and embed them on their own websites. Their activity dashboard will show them all the information they need, giving them a full overview of who has booked onto their upcoming activities and where they have spaces.“

The Playwaze platform makes it straightforward for parents to search, book and manage their bookings. Playwaze activity finders enable parents to search from hundreds of activities near to their location. Parents can then manage all their bookings using their free Playwaze account, showing them all their upcoming activities in a calendar view.

Families are supported in finding a whole range of holiday activities for their children to keep them active and stimulated. The children benefit with an improved school holidays experience and more social activity and interaction.