FAQs

For starters, you’ll get one-on-one personal attention from one of our team. You’ll be meeting similar, high-calibre professionals, plus we’ll do all the leg-work. You won’t have to trawl the internet or screen calls from pushy friends.

We’ve got the portfolio of clients. We’ve got the expertise. Once you’ve joined, it’s just about joining the dots.

Through a variety of ways. Existing members might recommend them, or they might find us via our website or an advert.

We don’t pretend that we use some sort of advanced software. We don’t wave a magic wand either. We just use a combination of skill, experience and intuition.

First of all, we’ll work through your details. We might start with broad information, such as your age and location. Then it might get a little more specific. We’ll move on to your job, hobbies, religion, passions, physical requirements and future goals.

Certainly. We recognise that dating is all about real people. So if you only want to meet someone from a certain area, that’s fine. If you’re interested in the arts, we can narrow your matches down to like-minded people. And so on.

At Bowes-Lyon Partnership we want you to be happy. Your requirements are always our only concern.

Pretty quickly. Once you’ve joined and we’ve found you a match, the next step is for the gentleman to make that initial call.

We think this is the best and most civilised way to get to get to know each other. We recommend that your first meeting is for a coffee or a lunch, something light, easy and pressure-free.

No problem. You can just freeze your membership to fit around what’s going on in your life. That allows you to focus on what’s important, without worrying about time and money.

We don’t think there’s any such thing as a difficult match. That’s the benefit of experience – we’ve helped all sorts of people find matches that are right for them.

Why don’t you get in touch so that we can have an initial chat? There’s no obligation. We’d just like the chance to grab a coffee, say hello and find out a bit more about you.

We’ll work around your needs, we have offices in London and Surrey, or we’re happy to come to you. To book an appointment, please click here. Or to request a brochure, please click here.

Our members all provide photo identification, to ensure they are who they say they are, and all members sign a mutual confidentiality agreement with Bowes-Lyon Partnership to maintain privacy and discretion on both sides. We only introduce members by first names only leaving them to reveal further information at their own pace.

As per the Consumer Contracts Regulation you have 14 days to cancel the service from the start of the membership.

We work with approximately 650-750 members at any one time. We stop taking on new members at the 850 mark as we feel we are not able to offer our attentive level of personal service past that point.

There is an initial amount of preparation required to start a membership, including signing of terms and conditions, having a photo-shoot and creating your personal profile synopsis. For this reason, we do not start the membership until you physically meet the first lady/gentleman. It means that your membership time isn’t being used during preparation stages.

Bowes-Lyon Partnership are members of the Matchmaking Institute which is a global organisation covering codes of practice and ethics of how a matchmaking business is run. You have to be interviewed and your contracts and service are evaluated before being awarded entry.

We have looked into joining on occasion but they have certain requirements that they ask each participating agency to adhere to. One of them is to put a maximum on the amount of introductions a member can have. They do this so that all agencies within the ABIA follow similar practice. We didn’t think that was beneficial to our members and didn’t want to be constrained by that rule. We believe they may have adjusted that requirement so it is something we may look to join in the near future. We have many members that are from overseas so we feel the Matchmaking Institute Accreditation is more relevant to our agency and calibre of members than the ABIA at present.

At certain times of the year we offer a small number of passive / complimentary memberships. This is offered to both men and women, depending on our gender balance. Our passive members go through the same joining process as our paying members; we personally meet them to understand about them, their lifestyle and their future aspirations. They sign confidentiality agreements and they provide photographic identification. They are also required to pay a small but important administration fee. To apply for passive membership, click here

As Director of Bowes-Lyon Partnership, Hayley’s main role is meeting all the prospective members. She has 4 staff, who are based in our Administration office, who assist her. They handle the copious amounts of administration, deal with members’ schedules, diaries, log all emails, calls, messages that allow us to note all feedback given after dates.

We don’t put any fixed time scales on introductions as we have to work things around our members’ individual schedules (which are all different) so if you are introduced and meet someone in the same week, and do not wish that introduction to progress to a second date then we immediately move onto the next introduction. We always have introductions lined up and ready to go so that there aren’t any gaps in the process or any loss of momentum.

We noticed a gap in the market that catered for the normal hard-working professional who didn’t want to use online dating. At the time many of the existing agencies catered for a much older clientele and it was quite an antiquated system of matching the right person with the right family, or right social set. A matchmaking style that is centuries old. It seemed that the business model hadn’t been modernised so that’s what Bowes-Lyon Partnership set out to do. We describe ourselves as a modern dating agency with old-fashioned values. By meeting everyone personally, and taking the time to understand our members lives and needs, we become trusted confidantes. By not using technological shortcuts, we believe there is more heart and soul in the process. We match people with people, not profiles with profiles.

We speak to our members on a weekly basis – communication and correspondence is the key to our success and we maintain regular contact with all our members.

We have over 72% success rate meaning that during an annual membership over 72% of our members will embark on a relationship that goes beyond 6 months duration.

We get most of our new business via personal referral. Over 65% of people come to us as they have been recommended by someone who has found success through us.

Many of our competitors don’t use photographs as part of their introductions but we feel it is an important part of the matchmaking process.

In a very competitive industry we believe in collaboration over competition so we enhance our members pool of potential by affiliating with other agencies who work in the same way as us

Of course, we tend to freeze memberships for a minimum of one week. We understand our members have holidays booked and freeze period can be one week, 10 days, two weeks etc or some are travelling for work or taking on overwhelming work projects and they may go on hold for a month or two. We also have to take into account ‘relationships’ where members decided to halt introductions to focus on a relationship with one person and that can be from any length of time to……well, forever! We will just ‘add on’ the time to the end of your membership so your annual membership can stretch to 18 months if you use all of the hold period.

It says in the contract by ‘written notice’ but that sounds very formal – most members just email or call us to let us know of any upcoming holidays/trip.

Yes, we encourage all our members to give us a call after each of their ‘dates’, this way we can act accordingly. For example, if you wish to see the gentleman again, we can relay this information in a timely manner. On the other hand, if you don’t think the date went so well and were not keen to meet up again, we can let the gentleman know. It just takes the pressure off so you can fully enjoy meeting new people without the hassle of all the other elements of ‘dating’.

Of course! We will take your lead on how you would like your dating journey to pan out. Some people only like to focus on one person at a time, whilst others are keen to have at least a couple on the go at once! We think it’s good to experiment meeting different people at the same time, particularly at the early stages, so we can start to generate feedback from a variety of gentlemen.

We only take on members where we truly feel confident about being able to provide a successful service. We are reputation-based so we need to take on clients who are a good fit for the agency and who are looking to meet the type of people that are in our portfolio of members. We get most our new business through personal referral so it is in our interests to only work with people where we know we can offer a comprehensive membership in the hope that they will then tell their friends/family/colleagues about their experience.

We turn down people who are looking for something that we don’t deliver ie. Members looking for short-term relationships do not fit our agency. All our members are looking for long-term committed relationships.

The business was started by our Founder and Director, Hayley Bystram, and she wanted a personal connection to the company name. Bowes-Lyon is a family name that is way back in her Scottish Ancestry. We find it works well with our ethos of confidentiality and discretion and denotes the calibre of members that we work with.