Hallmaster Shortlisted for the Customer Loyalty Award
We’re delighted to share that Hallmaster has been shortlisted for The Customer Loyalty Award at the Lloyds British Business Excellence Awards 2026.
For a small, independent software company, this is a particularly meaningful recognition.
The shortlist places Hallmaster alongside some of the UK’s best-known businesses, including British Gas and Octopus Electric Vehicles, as well as a range of ambitious and highly successful organisations from across the country.
For us, this isn’t really a story about competing with big names. It’s a story about the thousands of people who have chosen to stay with Hallmaster; a company built around people, not just software.
Hallmaster began in 2010, when founder Bernard Hammick was looking to add an availability calendar to a website he was creating for a client, adding a more efficient way for the venue’s administrators to take and manage their bookings.
The problem was familiar: people couldn’t see what was available, there was no quick way of being able to secure a date or time for a particular event, and bookings were becoming complicated; paper administration was taking too much time, and there was always the possibility of missing a booking or enquiry.
It soon became clear that this wasn’t a problem unique to this one client. Village halls, community centres, churches, sports clubs, playing fields, charities and other shared venues were facing many of the same challenges.
So Hallmaster grew from a solution to one venue’s problem, into a booking and venue management platform now used by more than 3,500+ organisations across more than 12 countries. The system supports more than 9,500 administrators and facilitates more than 1,000,000 bookings every year. But the numbers only tell part of the story.
Behind these bookings are people using the Hallmaster System, volunteering their evenings and precious time to run village halls, administrators keeping community centres open, church teams managing shared spaces, sports clubs organising facilities and countless others making sure their venues remain available to the people who rely on them. That is who Hallmaster has always been built for.
Loyalty Measured in Years
Customer loyalty is particularly meaningful when your customers are not just numbers on a database. 68 Hallmaster customers have been with the company for more than 12 years, which is the furthest back our available data goes. These are relationships that have survived changing technology, changing legislation, changing communities and even the disruption of national lockdowns.
And they have often grown through recommendation. A customer discovers Hallmaster, uses it, trusts it, and then recommends it to another venue. That is perhaps the most powerful form of customer loyalty we could ask for.
It is also reflected in the feedback we receive through independent review platforms such as Trustpilot, where customers regularly highlight the combination of straightforward software and responsive, human support.
For Hallmaster, customer service isn’t an add-on to the product. It is very much part of the product.
Listening is Part of How We Develop
One of the reasons customers stay is because Hallmaster continues to change with them. The software has never been developed simply to add more features. Instead, the team listens to what administrators are struggling with and looks for ways to remove those frustrations. That might mean generating dozens of invoices in seconds rather than hours – which it does! It might mean recurring bookings removing repetitive administration. It might mean preventing double bookings through a live central calendar. It might mean allowing customers to book and pay online, or integrating bookings with heating, door access and accounting systems.
And increasingly, it means helping venues understand their own performance through better reporting and data.
Over the past year, Hallmaster has welcomed more than 280 new organisations, introduced 12 major software updates and maintained 99.9%+ uptime. Growth has never meant losing sight of the people using the system.
A Small Team With a Big Commitment to Customers
Customer loyalty doesn’t happen without employee loyalty. Hallmaster remains a small, close-knit business, with a remarkably stable team. The company is led by Managing Director and founder Bernard Hammick, alongside his wife Linda and a select group of long-standing employees. Gemma, who has been with the business for many years, is a familiar voice to many of our customers, and is happy to share her wealth of experience and knowledge through the company’s UK-based customer service team.
When customers call Hallmaster, they aren’t passed around an enormous support operation. They speak to people who understand the product, understand the sector and, in many cases, know the challenges their organisation is facing – sometimes better than them! For volunteer-led venues in particular, that human connection can make the difference between feeling overwhelmed by new technology and feeling confident enough to embrace it.
Putting Customers Before Commercial Opportunity
Hallmaster’s approach to loyalty extends beyond what happens inside the software. The company works closely with organisations including Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO), supporting conferences, events, training and sector communications. Hallmaster also shares relevant information and introduces customers to trusted organisations that can help them with other aspects of running their venues, from legislation and governance to insurance and financial matters. And sometimes, putting customers first means deciding not to sell something.
Hallmaster has deliberately turned down commercial opportunities and partnerships when they did not provide a genuine benefit to its customers.
The principle is straightforward: If it doesn’t help the customer, why should we sell it? That approach may not always maximise short-term commercial opportunity, but it has helped build something far more valuable over the long term: trust.
The Impact Goes Beyond the Booking
The organisations using Hallmaster collectively generate significant income through their venues. For many community venues, the income that Hallmaster helps them generate helps keep buildings open, maintain facilities and fund the activities that take place inside them.
A booking might be a yoga class, a Scout meeting, a wedding, a veterans’ gathering, a toddler group, a community breakfast, a charity fundraiser, a parish council meeting, or a village quiz night.
Hallmaster doesn’t create those moments. The people and communities using our customers’ venues do. Our job is to remove some of the administrative barriers that stand in their way.
What the Nomination Means
When we first developed Hallmaster, we weren't trying to build an award-winning software company, but more that we were simply solving a problem. This nomination is a reminder that the best technology starts not with code, but with understanding people. We're proud that what began as a solution for one family business now helps thousands of organisations operate more efficiently and sustainably. Their success continues to inspire everything we do, and we're excited about the opportunities ahead.
The Customer Loyalty Award recognises businesses that demonstrate strong customer engagement, long-term relationships, repeat and referral business, innovation and sustained client value. For Hallmaster, therefore, being shortlisted feels particularly fitting, because ultimately, customer loyalty is something customers give you. It can’t be manufactured or bought. And we certainly don’t take it for granted!
We are incredibly grateful to every organisation that has trusted Hallmaster, recommended us, challenged us to improve, and stayed with us as their own venues and communities have evolved.
We might be one of the smallest names on the shortlist, but we have some of the very best customers behind us. Whatever happens on awards night in November, that is something we’re extremely proud of. And, for a company that started by trying to solve one family’s problem, it’s quite a journey.
Three things set the programme apart: the scale and prestige of the platform, the calibre and independence of the judging panel, and the rigour of the entry and pitch process. That rigour is what makes a BBEA win so meaningful, and why finalists value the recognition even before the winners are announced.