Every Sports Facility Management Team we speak to are fully aware of what booking slots are the most popular, across all their facilities. Typically, in the UK, for most sports, 7pm - 10pm, Monday to Thursday sees the highest utilisation rates, with a special mention to 10am - 4pm on Saturdays and Sundays for formal grassroots sports focused facilities.
However, this is only half the picture when it comes to a true understanding of what drives utilisation. An aspect that fewer Sports Facility Management Teams can elaborate on is when bookings for these facilities are made.
To understand bookings across your facilities, you should understand the lead time between when bookings are made, and when the bookings actually take place.
This allows for a real understanding of what drives utilisation, and we will refer to this going forward as “Booking Window Analysis”. Booking Window Analysis is a powerful tool focused on Lead Times that can provide Facility Operators with valuable insight into customer behaviour, spending, and improve operational decision making. Simply put, examining the lead time between when bookings are made and the date of the booking itself allows smarter, data driven decisions to be taken.
Why Booking Lead Times Differ
We looked at the data behind over 325,000 facility bookings in the past 12 months, across over 40 sports. *Its worth noting that some sports are much more heavily represented than others in this data set, but broadly aligns with each sports popularity in our represented countries.
The primary reasons for differing lead times are, in order:
1) Number of players required to fulfil the booking.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the average lead times for sports that require fewer players are much shorter than for bookings that require a larger number. Logically, it is easier to arrange for two people total to play a game of squash at short notice than it is to organise a full 15 a side game of rugby. Of course, this is further exaggerated by the fact organised league games are typically booked much further ahead of time. With the most popular sports in the UK being football, rugby and cricket, all of which require a larger amount of players, this adds to the distortion here.
We do still see a statistical difference, even when accounting for sport. Small sided football gives us the most data points to work with from our bookings data. Here, the Bookings Lead Time uniformly increases as you work up from 5 a side, 6 a side, 7 a side, 9 a side and 11 a side facilities.
2) Existing Utilisation Rate for the Facilities in Question - A.K.A FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
We think this one is fairly self explanatory. For facilities that are typically busy, with high utilisation rates, bookers look to secure their slot further in advance, often as soon as the slot becomes available for booking.
At pitchbooking you are able to set the limitations on how far in advance a booker can make a reservation. Typically this is a judgement call on balancing flexibility for customers, with operational decisions for the Facility Management Team.
Interestingly, this reason broadly holds across all sports, locations and facility sizes. Scarcity, or the possibility of not securing a slot incentivises your customers to book well in advance. We have even seen examples of commercially minded facilities that charge an optional premium to give some customers first access to booking slots. This kind of monetisation is discussed in more detail below in the Dynamic Pricing section.
3) Last Minute Incentives to Book - skewing data the other way
The first two reasons speak to an increase in the time between bookings being made and the booking taking place. But the third reason actually moves the average Booking Lead Time the other direction - last minute incentives.
We note a significant uptick in bookings when Facility Providers offer a financial discount (or value added incentive such as free equipment usage or sundries) at times of lower than expected booking volume. Typical of this would be an offer for bookings on the same day, or perhaps the following day after a glut of late cancellations.
How to use this information in my business?
So you now have a grasp of your Booking Lead Time, how it differs for your range of facilities, and how it is affected by your promotional offers. What should you do with this information?
There are typically two ways that the market leaders use this info:
1) Inform your pricing
Disclaimer: In this section we speak about pricing of facility hire. We are aware that there are more considerations than just maximising the income from the hire of sports facilities for the vast majority of our customer base, and we not only advise that these considerations are taken into account, but we also look to support grassroots and community sports as a company. Pricing can be used not just to maximise revenue, but to subsidise the use of facilities for different groups. Above all, we want to promote sustainable Sports Facilities that can be a fantastic asset for their local communities. For further information on our range of grassroots sport support, please reach out to us here
Dynamic & variable pricing can be a game changer when paired with your understanding of your Booking Lead Times. The vast majority of facilities already implement some form of variable pricing, with on peak / off peak prices, as well as pricing based on age group usage. Less common is a varying of the price based on how close we are to the booking taking place.
For example, if weekend slots book up quickly from 3 weeks out, you might look to encourage early bookings via a lower price, and increase as the availability decreases. This can help balance revenue throughout the booking cycle, encouraging more customers to secure their spots early, while rewarding those who commit sooner rather than later.
What are the typical costs for hire of a facility? This is complex, and something we have covered in a previous blog.
2) Optimise your schedule
Booking window analysis is an ideal start point for optimising your facility's maintenance schedule. You will inherently know the rough ebbs and flows of utilisation for your facilities, but knowing your typical Booking Window will allow you to finalise plans.
This insight allows for proactive maintenance planning. Instead of scrambling to fix equipment during busy hours because a flurry of last minute bookings came in, you can schedule maintenance during those quieter times. Of course, this points to the advantages of securing your bookings well in advance, and all things equal, we see this as the preferred approach for our Customer Base.
How Pitchbooking Customers are supported with their Booking Lead Times and Booking Window Analysis
Pitchbooking is a leading software solution for Sports Facilities. We provide access to instant data trends on your bookings, and enable you to take calculated actions based on real time insights.
Data Collection: Pitchbooking's platform captures data on when bookings are made and when they are scheduled, giving you the "window" needed for analysis.
Comprehensive View: This data can be viewed and analysed across the bookings table, analytics tab, and payments tables to give a full picture.
Analytics: Pitchbooking offers game-changing analytics to help you understand booking patterns and customer behaviour.
Booking Window Analysis is a valuable tool for sports facility managers to understand and implement business routines on. By understanding booking lead times, facilities can tailor their marketing strategies, implement dynamic pricing and schedule their operations in a way that fits with their customer base.