01
Sort players into 3 groups before you write anything
Take the last 2 months of bookings and put every player in one of 3 groups: regulars who book every week, occasional players who book monthly, and one-time players who booked once. Regulars carry most of the revenue and almost all of the risk. They are the group the switch is really about.
For each regular, note how they book. A player who books the same court every Tuesday is a recurring booking waiting to be set up. A player who books after a group chat decides on a time needs a link that works on a phone in under a minute.
- Regulars: weekly bookers, contact each one directly
- Occasional players: monthly bookers, an email and a reminder
- One-time players: an email, no follow-up
- League and class participants: told in person at the next session
02
Send one message with one link
Write one message and send it everywhere: email, the club’s social accounts, a printed sheet at the desk, and a note in the confirmation of every booking in the final 2 weeks. It should say what changes, the date, the new link, and what does not change. Keep it under 100 words.
The link should land on the booking page, not a home page. A player who has to find the button will send a message to the desk instead, and the desk will book it by hand, and the switch quietly stops happening.
03
Time the switch around the schedule, not the invoice
Switch on a Monday in a quiet week, not the week the league starts. Give players 2 weeks of notice, and send the message twice: once when the date is set and once 3 days before. Anything longer than 2 weeks and the first message is forgotten.
Enter every future booking into the new system before the message goes out. A regular who opens the new site and finds their Tuesday slot already there trusts the move immediately. One who finds an empty calendar assumes something is lost.
04
Keep the habit: same slot, same price, same rules
The strongest reason to keep booking with you is that nothing else changed. Keep the court names, the hour grid, the price bands, and the cancellation window identical for the first month. Improvements can wait. A move and a rule change at the same time reads as a price rise, whatever the numbers say.
Set up recurring bookings for regulars on their behalf and tell them it is done. Set up the league schedule and the class rosters. The fewer taps a regular has to make in week one, the fewer messages the desk gets.
- Same court names and the same hour grid
- Same price bands, including any member discount
- Same cancellation window, shown at checkout
- Recurring slots created for regulars before launch
- Existing credits or passes carried over and visible in the player account
05
Know which players you will lose, and why that is fine
Some players came from the marketplace and will stay with the marketplace. They booked your club because it appeared in a list, and they will book the next club in the list. That is not a failure of the message. It is a sign that those bookings were rented demand, and a small incentive for a first booking on the new site will win back the ones who liked the courts.
Count them. If more than a small share of regulars fall away, the problem is usually a broken link or a missing slot, not loyalty.
06
Measure the first 4 weeks
For the first 4 weeks, put 3 numbers on the Monday report: bookings made by players on the new site, bookings entered by the desk by hand, and bookings that came in through any old channel. The first should rise every week and the second should fall. If the desk is still entering most bookings after a month, the link or the message is the problem.