Case study · Student accommodation
Urbanest: ten London buildings, one mailroom system
Over 2,000 parcels a week arrive across the group. A median of six hours later they are in the resident's hands, and 98.4% of them are collected.
- 10London buildings on one system
- 2,000+parcels a week across the group
- 6hmedian arrival to collection
- 65%collected within 24 hours
Ten buildings, more than 4000 residents, one system
Urbanest runs purpose-built student accommodation across London: Westminster, City, Battersea, Vauxhall, King's Cross, St Pancras, Hoxton, Tower Bridge, Victoria and Canary Wharf. Every one of them is a mailroom, and every one of them runs on the same system.
Over the two years to July 2026 those buildings logged 215,419 items. That is more than 2,000 a week, every week, for two years, into buildings whose entire population turns over each September.
We receive over 400 parcels per week on one site alone, and this app has revolutionised the way we handle our parcels. It’s a very fast, efficient and a reliable way for us to manage our parcels.
The mailroom app allows us to record all the packages we receive from both domestic and international couriers, which then gives our student residents an email to notify them. They receive a QR code, we scan that code and hand over the parcels, its that easy!
Ruhul Amin
Urbanest
Six hours from the door to the resident
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Median six hours
At City and Vauxhall the median time from a parcel being scanned in to a resident walking away with it is six hours.
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544 in a single day
The busiest day on record was 1 October 2024 at Westminster Bridge.
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Three carriers, 79%
Amazon is 38% of everything arriving, Royal Mail 29%, Evri 12%.
The parcel intake peak for PBSA is October, not September
Student accommodation staffs for September. Residents arrive, keys are handed over, and everyone braces. The parcels arrive a month later: October runs 178% of an average month against September's 113%, and 5.8 times the volume of August.
People move in during September and spend October ordering the things they did not bring. September and October together take 24% of the year's parcels in two months.
The busiest month on record for the group was October 2025, at 4,211 items a week. Read the full findings in the parcel data report.
What the process looks like
Scanned in at the door
Every item is logged on arrival against the resident it belongs to, whichever courier brought it. Nearly half a day's parcels have arrived by 2pm, so the room fills fast and then has to empty.
The resident is emailed
Notification is a consequence of the scan, not a separate job somebody remembers to do. That is what turns 2,000 arrivals a week into 2,000 collections rather than a queue at the desk.
Collected against a QR code
The resident brings the code, the team scans it, the handover is recorded against the item. No signature book, no guessing who took what.
Anything left over gets chased
Uncollected items are reminded automatically on a schedule. It is why 98.4% leave the building rather than accumulating behind reception.
Running more than one building?
Traizr is licensed per building rather than per person, so a portfolio is one system and one process.