01
Days 1 to 30: every booking goes through the schedule
The only goal for the first month is that the online schedule is the truth. Every phone call, every walk-in, every coach lesson is entered by the desk into the same schedule players book from. If a court is booked on paper and not online, a player will book it online and turn up to a full court, and the club loses that player’s trust in the system on day 1.
Keep prices and rules exactly as they were. Changing the cancellation window and the booking tool in the same week gives players 2 things to blame and the desk no way to tell which one is causing the calls. Send a payment link for phone bookings so the desk never takes card details over the phone.
Print the online address on the desk and put it on the confirmation the desk hands over. Every phone booking is a chance to show the link, and the calls thin out once players have used it once.
- Desk enters every booking, from any channel, into the online schedule
- Prices and rules unchanged for the first 30 days
- Payment links for phone bookings from week 1
02
Days 31 to 60: add the rules that stop leaks
With a month of real data the club can see its no-show rate, its late cancellations, and which hours never sell. Now add the rules, one a week. Week 5: card payment at booking for non-members. Week 6: a published cancellation window with automatic refunds. Week 7: a waitlist on the 3 slots that fill fastest. Week 8: a release rule for recurring bookings.
Announce each rule 7 days before it applies, on the booking page and by email, and give the reason in one sentence. Players accept a rule that has a reason and a date. They resist a rule that appears on the confirmation screen without warning.
03
Days 61 to 90: sell more than single hours
The third month is for products that need a working schedule underneath them. Memberships that include off-peak hours, a class timetable with capacity and a waitlist, and 1 open play session in the quietest evening slot. Each one is a reason for a player to come back without deciding each time.
Start memberships with 1 plan, not 3. A single off-peak plan with a member rate at peak is easy to explain at the desk and easy to price. Add a second tier only when players on the first one are asking for something it does not include.
Price the plan from the occupancy report, not from what the club down the road charges. The report shows which off-peak hours are empty, and the plan should include exactly those.
- One membership plan that includes off-peak and discounts peak
- A class timetable with capacity and a waitlist behind each full class
- One open play session in the emptiest evening hour
04
Measure the same three numbers every week
Occupancy by hour, no-shows, and the share of bookings made online. Put them in a Monday email to whoever runs the club and compare each with the week before. Occupancy shows whether the pricing is right, no-shows show whether the rules are working, and the online share shows whether players have changed habit.
By day 90 the online share should be above three quarters and rising, and the no-show number should have dropped after the payment rule in week 5. If either has not moved, the fix is in the desk’s habits, not in the software: check whether phone bookings are still going on paper.
- Occupancy by hour band, against last week
- No-shows by booking type
- Online share of all bookings, including desk-entered ones
05
Three things not to do in the first 90 days
Do not run 2 booking systems in parallel beyond the first week. Do not import every historic booking, since only future bookings and the member list matter. Do not build a custom rule for one regular who dislikes the new window. The regular will adapt in 2 weeks, and the custom rule will outlive them.
A fourth, smaller one: do not change the club’s opening hours in the same quarter. Every rule above assumes the hours players already know, and a new closing time on top of a new booking tool makes the occupancy numbers unreadable for a month.