For clubs
Sports facility management: running a court rental business
In a facility that rents courts, profit comes from occupancy far more than from rates. When two facilities charging the same price get different results, the reason is usually not the price but how the empty hours are handled. This guide covers the four things that make operations measurable.
The only real measure: occupancy by hour
Monthly revenue hides which hours earn. The meaningful measure is the occupancy of each court in each time slot: weekday 10:00–16:00 occupancy should be tracked independently of the evening peak.
You cannot measure that from a paper diary, because cancellations and changes never get recorded. The real benefit of holding bookings in a system is that at month end it shows, beyond argument, which hours stayed empty.
Consolidate booking channels
Phone, WhatsApp, walk-ins and the app: unless all four write to the same calendar, double bookings are inevitable. A double booking costs more than the hour — the player does not come back.
You do not have to close the channels; they just have to land in one calendar. When reception enters a phone booking on the same screen, availability in the app updates instantly and a clash becomes impossible.
Fill dead hours with use, not discounts
Discounting weekday daytime is the obvious move, but it risks pulling your evening customers into the afternoon. The safer route is bringing a different group into those hours: school groups, corporate deals, coaching hours, age-group leagues.
Tournaments and ladder leagues do the same job, and cost nothing. Because ladder matches are scheduled by the players themselves, they naturally spread into the quiet hours and create steady traffic.
Separate permissions, especially across sites
Reception needs to create bookings; it does not need to change prices or delete payments. Where permissions are not separated, you cannot tell a mistake from misuse — who changed what, and when, has to be on record.
Operators with several sites need each branch running its own calendar and till, while management compares branches. Aice Club covers this with branch-level management and staff permissions.