Tennis Court Booking System
Tennis Court Booking System
This sports facility management company has tennis courts in multiple locations. Each location has several courts. They also run several training programmes. The pricing of the courts vary based on the time of the day and court type.
The business needs a booking management software system for tennis courts and for coaching staff. BookAndPay.com booking management software system meets various requirements.
Book Courts
Customers can choose the location or court when booking. Pay online securely. Get notifications and reminders with details on payment, driving directions or how to cancel |
Book Coaching Sessions
Coaching staff can create the sessions, decide the schedule and publish it for booking with minimal or no help from technical team |
Variable Pricing ------------------
Cost of the booking can vary based on the time of the day or day of the week,year |
Self-Service ------------------
Your customer can login to cancel booking, get refunds, view past bookings and invoices 24/7 |
Easy to add to website -------------------------
You only need to add just one button or link to your website to manage multiple courts or locations. |
Recurring Booking -------------------------
Customers can make recurring booking. E.g Book a court from 4 to 5pm every Thursday for 6 months |
Benefits
The tennis court booking management system created significant improvements to tennis court management business. It has very positive impact on customers / players, coaches, office administrators and owners.
Benefits for customers / players
Benefits enjoyed by customers and players after using booking management system.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| No proper online booking. Most bookings were over the phone or walk-ins. Loss of customers when office is not attended. | Online booking with real time status. 24/7 access |
| Customers cannot select the tennis court when booking | Customer can select court location and court type (grass,synthetic,hard) |
| Customers cannot pay online | Pay online using secure payment gateways |
| Customers do not receive proper notifications | Customers can receive SMS, Email or WhatsApp messages |
| Customers cannot make cancellations online | Customers login to self-service and make changes |
| Hard to get refunds on cancellations | Customers get automatic refunds on cancellation |
| Customers cannot get history of their bookings or payments | Customers get detailed history of bookings and payment via self-service |
| Customers have to call to make recurring or permanent booking. | Customers can make recurring or permanent bookings and easy to see availability |
| Customers cannot make cancellations online | Customers login to self-service and make changes |
| Cancellation policies and refund policies are not clear | Customers have clear idea on cancellation terms and refund policies and gives confidence |
| Notification messages have limited information | Customers can receive notification messages with detailed information such as google maps to the location or links to share booking details with others |
| Notification messages have limited information | Customers can receive notification messages with detailed information such as google maps to the location or links to share booking details with others |
Benefits for staff, coaches and owners
Benefits enjoyed by staff, coaches and owners after using booking management system.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Customers can use the tennis courts even when office is unattended | |
| Need to check manually if a court is available | Staff can create different schedules for different courts, locations or court types. See schedule |
| Lot of manual work and overhead in managing special events | Staff can block out time from online booking easily for special events. |
| Manual booking and collection for walk in customers | Walk in customers can still book online and pay by cash. |
| Cancellations and Refunds are painful and lot of customer dissatisfaction | Transparent and easy refunds with clear cancellation policies and its all automatic. Refund fees and cancellation times for refunds can be configured as well. E.g Full refund if cancelled 48 hours before booked time |
| Managing variable pricing leads to confusion and accounting mistakes | Variable pricing allows you to create pricing based on the time of the day, day of the week or time of the year or special occasions such as school break. See payment |
| Training or coaching classes were run separately and no online booking | Tennis coaches can create new classes and make it online. Customers can book for the term and get full self-service functionality such as session time, payment etc. Coaching staff can create the time-table (schedule) and publish it with minimal or no help from technical team |
| Creating coaching session needed lot of planning and overhead costs | Coaching staff can create and run classes and even notify potential participants easily. Its very easy to create a session. E.g Tennis coaching for beginners. 4pm every Friday at Location Z for 10 weeks. Cost is $20 per session or $200 for full term |
| Difficult to create reports on customers, booking, revenue | Managers, Owner, Staff can get reports on customers, bookings, revenue. Access to reports can also be managed. |
| Running promotional campaigns were difficult | Easy to export information on customers and run a campaign using external email or social media tools |
| Staff has no easy way to send bulk notifications | Staff can notify customers who booked for training or a courts. For example closure due to weather event can be notified to all users who booked in the next 24 hours. |
In a nutshell, the tennis court booking software system helps the customer with
- More bookings and revenue
- Improved customer experience
- Reduced a lot manual work and resulting efficiency gain.
- Substantially reduced administrative overhead and associated cost.
Implementation
The solution was to replace existing web booking form which was not providing much improvement in booking numbers with managed hosted book and pay solution.
Since the customer did not have on-premise systems and did not have full time IT staff, the team decided to use the managed hosted deployment.
No changes made to existing website apart from adding Book Now and Login buttons. No programming was required for integration.
The Book Now button is used by customers of sports facility to view the availability. The Login button is used by repeat customers, staff and managers to view bookings, get invoices, update profile and other self-service features.
To meet the customer requirements, the workflow was divided into three parts
-
Booking workflow
-
Payment workflow
-
Self-service workflow
Tennis Court Booking Workflow
The booking management system for tennis courts automates the work flow related to scheduling, booking, notifications aspects of the customer booking for courts and coaching sessions.
One of the requirement is to the ability to book for training classes in addition to adhoc court bookings. Training class schedule are specific to class and vary all the time. For example, a tennis training schedule might look like this
Tennis class for Beginners. Class is for 1 hour, every week starting Oct 11, 2019 ; every Mondays at 7pm and Fridays at 4pm. The tennis class ends after 10 sessions. If the date falls on a public holiday, there is no class. The location is Sydney, Australia.
- Frequency: Every week
- When: Mondays at 7pm and Fridays at 4pm
- Duration: 1 hour per class
- Ends After: 10 classes total
- Starting: class starts on Mar 11,2019
- Location: Australia/Sydney
- Conditions: No classes if it’s a public holiday in Australia
There may be multiple classes with different schedules. Customers should be able to view the available classes and book the sessions. Training class schedules are created by the trainers themselves using schedule UI.
Payment workflow
The booking management system for tennis courts automates the work flow related to payment. Payments are handled in two different ways by the tennis court booking system.
-
One off payment - This type of payment is used for tennis court booking and for paying training classes. For example tennis court booking is a one off booking most of the time. Training classes may also use one off payment for the term.
-
Recurring payment - This type of payment is for recurring booking of tennis courts. For example a customer may book a tennis court every week at 6pm on Saturdays for 6 months. Payment will be processed 24 hours prior to the time (i.e Friday at 6pm).
Full details of payment can be found in the payment feature
An example of payment workflow is shown below
Self-service workflow
Self-service function enables tennis court and training customers to view past and current bookings, make changes and update the details without calling staff during 9 to 5.
Self-service is also useful for staff to view bookings for a specific court or location or training classes. Self-service allows the staff with certain roles to view and create reports. For example, staff can create reports on customers and their bookings. This will allow to run campaigns or even just to send updates on some changes.
Self-service can also used by staff for bulk notifications. For example staff may close the facility for 24 hours due to an impending weather event and hence all customers who have booked for training or courts will be notified without individual messages.
Details of the self-service function can be found in [self-service feature](../../features/self-service).
Features Used in Tennis Court Booking
Assets
Scheduling
Availability
Notifications
Variable Pricing & Payment
Hosted Deployment
Advanced security
Self-service
Reporting system
APIs
Integration of Booking System
The Book Now button and the Login button is added to the existing website and button URLs used the URL of the deployment location. No other integration required.
Configurations
Before the tennis court booking system goes live, the staff at tennis court facility management company carries out the following tasks.
Customer is not required to do any installation for managed hosted deployment.
- Connect: The people who manages the website adds the Book Now button and the Login button.
- Configure: The staff customize the application to suit their needs. This includes configuring information about
- Create courts in the system.
- Add information on courts such as address, court type,
- Configure the schedule for courts.
E.g 10 am to 9pm Mon,Tue,Wed. 2PM to 10PM on weekdays... - Configure pricing. Fixed or variable pricing. I.e how much it will cost to book based on time/day.
E.g. $20/hr from 10 to 5PM and $25/hr from 5PM to 10PM - Configure customer notification messages. When, what and how to send. E.g
send payment notification by Email 2 minutes after receiving payment with invoice - Configure how to receive payments from customers.
- Configure the colors and layout of booking pages.
- Add training class schedules, max participants, cost