How ICCA Dubai grew profit 10% with Gallabox

About ICCA Dubai

ICCA has been training chefs in Dubai since 2005, earning a place among the "Top 10 Culinary Institutes in the World" along with Worldchefs' Recognition of Quality Culinary Education. Over 20 years, more than 12,000 chefs from over 20 countries have come through its Professional Diploma, Amateur, and Artisanal programs.

The recognition extends well beyond the classroom. ICCA has received the City & Guilds London Lion Awards' International Centre of the Year, ProChef ME Cooking School of the Year, and BBC Good Food Culinary School of the Year in 2022. The school also runs a Culinary Scholarship Program that has supported more than 200 chefs from the UAE hospitality industry with international qualifications worth over $2 million, alongside partnerships with brands including Etihad, Taj, Atlantis The Palm, and Emirates Flight Catering.

A message sent once, and nothing after

Running a culinary school means constant outreach, new intakes, upcoming programs, scholarship deadlines, each needing its own message to the right audience at the right time. ICCA had been handling all of it manually, sending marketing messages one at a time with no structured sequence guiding a prospective student from first interest through to enrollment.

That created two specific gaps. There was no proper drip marketing setup to keep a lead warm over time, and no AI chatbot to handle the routine, repetitive questions that come with running a school this size. ICCA had been using Messagebird before this, but it didn't solve either problem the way the team needed.

Why ICCA chose Gallabox

ICCA wasn't looking for a long list of features. It needed a platform that could do two specific things well: run structured drip marketing on its own, and support a working AI chatbot for everyday conversations.

Those two requirements shaped the search from the start. A tool that could handle drip sequences without constant manual input, paired with a chatbot capable of managing routine conversations on its own, would free the team from a process that had been entirely manual up to that point. That search led ICCA to Gallabox, a platform built around exactly those two capabilities rather than a broader set of features the school didn't need.

How they use Gallabox

• Chatbots handle conversations automatically, so a question gets a response without waiting on someone to be free.
• Drip marketing runs a structured sequence over time, replacing messages that used to be sent manually, one at a time.
• Click-to-WhatsApp ads turn an ad click into a conversation directly, so interest gets a response right away.

Outcomes

• Gross business profit grew 10%, the clearest sign that automated marketing is converting better than manual outreach did.
• Conversion rate and customer satisfaction both rose 10% too. Drip sequences keep following up long after a single message would have gone quiet, and that consistency shows up in how satisfied prospective students feel with the response they get.
• Employee productivity improved 10% as well, time freed up from no longer sending messages one at a time. Business growth impact stands at a smaller 5%, still real for a school automating its marketing for the first time.

What other education and training institutions can do with WhatsApp automation

• Institutes managing manual outreach to prospective students can set up drip sequences that follow up automatically, rather than depending on someone remembering to send the next message.
• Schools running paid ad campaigns can use click-to-WhatsApp ads to turn interest into a conversation right away, instead of a form that may go unanswered.
• Training institutions fielding repetitive enquiries can let a chatbot manage the first round of questions, freeing up staff for conversations that need a person's attention.
• Institutions running scholarship or outreach programs can use structured messaging to keep applicants informed at every stage, without manual follow-up at each one.