Caught in the Aggregator Trap?
Picture this: you’re working hard to keep your community centre humming. A new inquiry pings into your inbox from one of the big venue hire listing sites. It should be a moment of celebration – another potential booking – yet you know what comes next: an hour of emails, phone calls and back‑and‑forth calendar checks, often ending with nothing to show for it. Aggregators keep you visible, but they also lock you into clunky processes and endless tyre‑kickers. Is it really worth the trade‑off? At SpacetoCo we believe there’s a better way to grow bookings and reclaim your time – and our experience across Australia and New Zealand proves it can work for UK community centres too.
Why the Aggregator Model Fails Community Venues
Many community centre managers have shared similar frustrations with the UK’s venue hire aggregators. Each platform works differently – some force you to log in to handle every request, others simply email details for you to chase – but they all have a few things in common.
Most don’t show live availability, so prospective hirers make requests for times you’ve already booked. The conversion rate of enquiries is painfully low, often less than 10 %. If each enquiry takes about 30 minutes, ten dead‑end requests per week waste roughly five hours – time that could have been spent running programs or nurturing your community.
Worse still, you rarely get enough information to make an informed decision, and some sites automatically accept bookings on your behalf. Changing a booking or adding services can take days because you’re trapped in a middleman’s system.
Pricing, VAT and add‑on options are rigid; listings can be outdated or even promote competing venues. And when the booking does go ahead, aggregators take an aggressive slice and chase you for their fee.
On top of all that, manual processes leave your team chasing invoices, issuing bonds and reconciling payments – exactly the kind of inefficiency that drags down your centre.
A Hybrid Platform That Works: Marketplace + Management
When SpacetoCo launched in Western Australia in 2017 we were also a simple marketplace. We soon realised that local venues weren’t just dealing with ad‑hoc hirers; they were juggling regular users, internal bookings and different pricing tiers. Spamming centres with enquiries created more work for them – the very opposite of our mission.
The solution was to build a hybrid model: a listing site that attracts new customers and a purpose‑built online booking system that manages the entire process. With SpacetoCo you can display live availability, accept or decline bookings with one click, automate invoicing and payment collection, handle security bonds, refunds, changes and sell add‑ons.
Because the platform filters out tyre‑kickers and requires guests to make requests with payment details, our conversion rate is around 85–90 %, and it takes just one to two minutes to action a booking – that means your team spends less time chasing and more time creating relationships.
Real Results: More Bookings, Less Admin
Our hybrid approach isn’t a theory; it’s been proven across hundreds of spaces. SpacetoCo currently manages more than 540,000 bookings annually and over $12 million in booking value.
For the City of Cockburn’s community centres, SpacetoCo led to bookings growth of over 25 % within a year. Their staff report time savings of up to 70 minutes per booking and a 62 % reduction in calls from hirers, because live availability and automated payments mean fewer questions and no chasing. Kylie Santich, the Community Venues Officer, notes that the platform automates processes that used to take hours and frees staff to focus on more meaningful work.
In another case, the Hillview Intercultural Community Centre used SpacetoCo’s manual booking and application features to accommodate 79 new regular hirers in their first year.They now enjoy 100 % collection of invoices thanks to automated invoicing and payment flows. Across our network, venues routinely report an 80 % reduction in admin time for bookings and revenue increases of 10–30 %.
Testimonials from our partner community venues bring these numbers to life.
Kendra, who manages community venues in Kalamunda, says SpacetoCo is one of the best systems she has used for ease and process and that it gives her time back.
Connie from the Kete Aronui rehearsal facility notes that she can manage bookings quickly and that the platform has cut their operating time by 80 %.
Jill, General Manager of St Heliers & Glendowie Community Centre, reports that their bookings doubled and that their premises are now almost at full capacity
Lucy‑Mary from Aaiotanga Community Space speaks to the partnership: “We just love feeling like we're part of the same movement as SpacetoCo, and that together we can achieve something pretty awesome.”
These voices show that technology can create more than efficiency – it can foster shared purpose.
Checkout more stories from our community of venue partners here.
Beyond Bookings: Thriving Communities & Sustainability
What happens when you free community centre staff from manual admin? You unlock their capacity to build relationships, curate programs and strengthen the fabric of the community.
The team at Cockburn found that reduced admin allowed their team to devote more time to community outreach and engagement.
At Hillview, removing barriers like language and after‑hours availability meant multicultural residents could self‑serve bookings, improving accessibility. SpacetoCo’s broader mission reflects these ripple effects: we believe that utilising existing spaces efficiently contributes to a more sustainable future, stimulates local economies and builds a supportive, inclusive society.
When bookings are effortless, spaces that might sit idle become hubs for workshops, rehearsals and community gatherings. Data dashboards help finance teams reconcile revenue and plan budgets, while automated processes reduce risk and improve compliance. In short, a well‑designed online booking system doesn’t just fix a broken listing model – it becomes an enabler of thriving communities.
Ready to Break Free? Join the Movement
If you’re tired of wasting hours on aggregator leads that rarely convert, there is an alternative. SpacetoCo’s hybrid marketplace and comprehensive venue booking software has already transformed community venues across Australia and New Zealand, and we’re excited to bring this model to the UK.
By adopting an online system that shows live availability, automates admin and lets you stay in control, you can grow bookings without growing headaches. Want to see it in action? Book a demo with our local team, explore how SpacetoCo could work for your centre, and join a movement that’s redefining venue hire. The aggregator system may be broken, but together we can fix it.
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