A family in Hong Kong is choosing your school over three others. None of them have been to any of you.
Twinflow captures the campus, the teaching and boarding facilities and the grounds in photorealistic 3D, so a family deciding from overseas can genuinely assess the school before they book flights. Captured in the holidays, with no pupils in any model.
Forty-five thousand pounds a year, committed by a family who have never walked through the gates.
A boarding place now costs close to £45,000 a year before VAT, and a significant share of those places are taken by families living overseas. They are choosing between three or four schools they have only seen online, frequently on an agent's recommendation, and for many of them a visit means long-haul flights and a week off work. The decision gets made long before anyone arrives, and it gets made on whatever the school has managed to put on a website.
That decision has got harder to win. Independent school rolls have fallen sharply since VAT was introduced, boarding numbers are down more steeply still, and the overseas-domiciled cohort that underpins boarding has contracted two years running. Schools that filled their boarding houses from a waiting list are now competing for the same families as every other school in their league table, and most of them are competing with a photo gallery and a PDF prospectus.
Universities and colleges face the same structure at larger scale. International recruitment is a major revenue line, open day attendance is impossible for most overseas applicants, and the virtual open day most institutions offer is a video and a timetable rather than something a student can actually explore. In both cases there is an agent or a counsellor in the middle, recommending institutions on the strength of material they have never seen in person either.
Everything a family wants to see, captured in the holidays, with no pupils in any model.
Twinflow captures the parts of your school or campus that actually decide an application. Teaching spaces, science labs, art and design studios, the library, the sports hall and grounds, the theatre and music facilities, the dining hall, the chapel, and the boarding house common rooms and a representative study bedroom. The result is an interactive model a family can walk through together on a laptop in another timezone.
Capture takes place during school holidays or outside teaching hours, by DBS-checked technicians, with no pupils present and none appearing in any model. Occupied boarding bedrooms are excluded. We agree the full scope with your designated safeguarding lead before a date is booked, and that conversation happens first rather than as an afterthought.
The model goes on your admissions pages, into your international prospectus and agent packs, into the registrar's first reply to an overseas enquiry, and into your virtual open day, where it replaces a video with something the family can actually explore at their own pace.
Built for a decision made abroad, on advice, months before anyone arrives.
Win the family who cannot fly over to look.
They recommend what they can show.
Answer the question every parent actually asks.
Give the ninety percent who cannot attend something real.
Your science block is a reason to apply. Show it.
Fill the site when the pupils are not in it.
01 International admissions
An overseas family committing to boarding fees is making one of the largest discretionary purchases of their lives, for a place they have seen only in photographs. A model lets them walk the school together, in their own time and their own timezone, and it lets the grandparents and the extended family who often help fund the decision see it too.
In practice
- Campus model sent in the registrar's first reply to every overseas enquiry
- Families explore teaching, boarding and sports facilities before committing to a visit
- Forwardable link shared across a family making the decision together
- Embedded on the international admissions pages and in the digital prospectus
- Used in regional campaigns targeting your established overseas markets
02 Education agents and counsellors
A large share of international placements come through agents and school counsellors who shortlist on a family's behalf. Most of them have never visited your school either, and they recommend the institutions they can present confidently. Giving them a model is the cheapest familiarisation programme you will ever run.
In practice
- Model supplied to agents and counsellors as part of your partner pack
- Agents present the school to families in their own offices and their own language
- Replaces or supplements the familiarisation trips that agents cannot always make
- Used at overseas recruitment fairs on a laptop or tablet at the stand
- Makes a less well-known school credible to a channel with no history of it
03 Boarding houses and pastoral reassurance
The question every boarding parent asks, in every language, is where will my child actually sleep and who is looking after them. It is rarely answered well, because photographs of boarding accommodation are either staged or absent. Showing the common rooms, the house facilities and a representative study bedroom answers it directly.
In practice
- Boarding house common rooms and facilities captured during the holidays
- One representative study bedroom per house type, unoccupied and unidentifiable
- Shown alongside the dining hall, medical centre and pastoral spaces
- Used in the admissions conversation where parents ask about daily life
- No pupils, no personal belongings, no occupied rooms in any model
04 Open days, virtual and in person
Most people who consider your institution will never attend an open day, and almost no overseas applicant will. The virtual alternative is usually a video and a schedule. A model turns it into something an applicant can actually explore, and it works the other way too, letting visitors orient themselves before they arrive.
In practice
- Model forms the core of the virtual open day rather than a recorded talk
- Available year round, not only on the two Saturdays you run an event
- Visitors plan their route and find the buildings before arriving on the day
- Followed up to open day attendees so they can revisit what they saw
- Used by applicants revisiting the campus before accepting an offer
05 Facilities-led recruitment
Institutions invest heavily in science, design, sport, music and performance facilities precisely because they attract applicants, then represent that investment with four photographs. A model lets a prospective pupil or student see the actual workshop, studio, theatre or laboratory they would be working in, which is frequently the thing that decides a specialist applicant.
In practice
- Specialist teaching facilities captured in detail rather than as single shots
- Used in subject-specific and scholarship recruitment campaigns
- Sports facilities and grounds shown to athletic scholarship applicants
- Supports fundraising and development by showing donors what was built
- Re-captured after a new building opens, so the material matches the investment
06 Commercial lettings and holiday hire
With fee income under pressure, commercial use of the estate has moved from nice to necessary. Sports facilities, theatres, halls and whole campuses are let for summer schools, conferences, weddings, filming and community use. The same capture that serves admissions sells all of it, to a completely different buyer.
In practice
- Lettable spaces captured and used on the commercial hire pages
- Summer school and language course operators assess the site without a visit
- Conference and event organisers check capacity, layout and catering spaces
- Location scouts and production companies shortlist from the model
- Wedding and community hire enquiries answered with a model rather than a brochure
A simple, managed process, and we handle everything.
We agree the capture scope with your designated safeguarding lead before a date is booked. Our technicians hold enhanced DBS clearance. Capture takes place during school holidays or outside teaching hours. No pupils are present and no pupil appears in any model. Occupied boarding bedrooms are excluded entirely, and any representative bedroom is captured cleared of personal belongings so that no individual can be identified from it.
Our technician works through the agreed scope in a single visit where the site allows, or across a holiday period for a larger campus. We work around your site team, holiday maintenance and any lettings already in the diary.
Your model is processed and published within 24 hours. We deliver shareable links, embed codes and floor plan exports, ready for the admissions team, the website, the digital prospectus and your overseas agent partners.
We manage hosting. Re-capture can be booked after a new building opens, a refurbishment completes, or when the estate changes enough that the material no longer matches what a family would find on arrival.
One overseas boarder retained or recruited pays for the capture several times over.
At the sector's average boarding fee a single additional pupil, or a single family who would otherwise have gone elsewhere, covers the cost of a capture several times over in their first year alone. Before it does that, the same model is working across your open days, your agent network and your commercial lettings, which are three budgets that rarely buy anything together.
Engineered for every institution and campus type.
Where overseas recruitment underpins the roll and the parental decision is made entirely at distance.
Competing locally for a smaller pool, where the open day is the whole shop window.
Feeding senior schools, with families making a long-term commitment very early.
Short courses, high international mix, and a recruitment cycle that turns over every year.
International recruitment at scale, open days most applicants cannot attend, and heavy capital investment to show for it.
Vocational and technical facilities that are genuinely differentiating and almost never shown properly.
Where the facilities themselves are the reason an applicant chooses one institution over another.
Selling a campus experience to overseas families for a few weeks, entirely on what is online.
Every stakeholder across the school, college and university operation.
Accountable for the roll and the institution's standing. Signs off anything that changes how the school presents itself.
Owns applications and conversion. First substantive contact for most overseas families.
Owns the website, prospectus and campaigns, and the virtual open day that is currently a video.
Runs the overseas markets and agent relationships, and spends heavily on fairs and familiarisation trips.
Controls the budget and the commercial lettings income line. Wants one asset serving admissions and hire at once.
The people shortlisting institutions for families overseas. They recommend what they can show.
They are choosing between you and three others. Make sure yours is the one they can actually see.
Rolls are falling, boarding numbers are falling faster, and the overseas families who underpin boarding are choosing between more schools than they used to. The institutions that hold their numbers will be the ones a family in another country, and the agent advising them, can genuinely assess without getting on a plane. Captured in the holidays, with no pupils in any model, and agreed with your safeguarding lead before anything is booked.