Understanding and evaluating the demand for your tennis programs is essential not only for optimizing program offerings and ensuring your facility operates efficiently but also for identifying when it may be necessary to expand your team. Whether your facility operates year-round or seasonally, analyzing how demand has fluctuated over the last five years (or five seasons for seasonal facilities) provides valuable insights into trends and helps you make data-driven decisions, including when a new job offering might be required to keep up with growing demand.
This approach ensures that your hiring decisions are tied directly to program growth, helping you expand in a strategic, sustainable way.
1. Assessing Historical Demand
Start by reviewing registration numbers for each program. Compare these figures against available spots to see which classes are consistently filling up and which ones struggle to attract participants. This analysis will help identify opportunities for growth and areas that need improvement.
Beginner Classes vs. Advanced Classes
It’s common for Try Tennis 1.0 beginner classes to be more challenging to fill up compared to Develop Your Skills 3.5 classes for advanced players. This discrepancy can be explained by the different stages of a player’s journey:
- Beginner Classes (Awareness Stage): Beginners may still be in the awareness stage, considering their commitment to tennis. At this stage, they are often exploring options, meaning you need to compete with other sports and activities. Promoting your programs with attractive offers and targeted marketing becomes essential.
- Advanced Classes (Consideration and Retention Stage): Intermediate and advanced players already have a connection to tennis and are more likely to commit to a class without extensive promotion. Tennis is part of their lifestyle, making them easier to retain in your programs.
2. Tracking and Utilizing Waitlists
Waitlists are one of the most valuable data points for evaluating demand. Regularly updating and analyzing your waitlists provides clear indicators of when program changes might be necessary, such as adding new classes or adjusting schedules.
It’s not just about the number of people on the waitlist—tracking specific program interests and preferences, such as preferred class times (e.g., morning vs. evening), is critical. For example, if you have 80 people on the waitlist for evening programs with a total capacity of 200 spots, it might be time to explore options like opening additional sessions or considering a price increase.
While waitlists growing to 25-40% of total capacity may indicate a need for price adjustments, other factors, such as retention rates and how quickly classes fill up, should also guide your decision-making.
3. Increasing Prices Based on Demand
Raising prices when your classes are only 60-80% full is premature. Instead, focus on maximizing class capacity. When significant waitlists begin to develop for specific programs, this may signal an opportunity for a price increase.
If waitlists are for programs at times you currently don’t offer, it could also be an opportunity to open new sessions at those times, which would meet demand without requiring price changes.
When increasing prices, it’s crucial to communicate the reason clearly to players. Rather than blaming inflation, emphasize the added value they’ll receive. Players should see the price increase as an investment in a better experience. This could involve hiring better coaches, improving player-to-coach ratios, upgrading equipment, or enhancing facility amenities. Framing the price increase as a way to improve their experience helps ensure the change is well-received.
Example: In a facility I managed, evening classes were only 60% full. Our initial focus was on filling those classes, and once we achieved full capacity, we built a waitlist. This allowed us to gauge when to expand evening sessions. Eventually, we opened morning classes based on waitlist data. Within ten months, both evening and morning classes were fully booked through strategic scaling.
4. Understanding Program Structures and Demand Fluctuations
Does your demand remain steady throughout the year, or does it fluctuate? Understanding the structure of your program offerings can help you assess this. For example:
- Adult and Beginner Programs: Typically offered on a monthly basis, these programs provide flexibility for participants but tend to experience more fluctuations in registration numbers.
- Junior Competitive Programs: These often require longer-term commitments, such as 3-month sessions or a season-long commitment from September to June, offering more consistent and predictable revenue.
Some demand fluctuations may be linked to specific factors. It’s important to identify whether these factors are internal (e.g., staffing changes, price adjustments) or external (e.g., competition, weather conditions).
Example: In some areas, tennis programs experience seasonal fluctuations in demand. For instance, while managing an indoor facility in the Vancouver area, I observed a significant drop in demand from April to September, as participants preferred playing outdoors. This seasonality created challenges—our program capacity was maxed out during colder months, but retaining quality coaches during the warmer months was difficult.
We addressed this by offering more year-round initiatives to reduce seasonality. This stabilized demand across all seasons, enabling us to hire full-time coaches and maintain consistent revenue streams, which improved the overall quality and scalability of our programs.
Exercise: Optimizing Your Tennis Programs
To put the concepts from this blog post into practice, download the Outdoor Tennis Program Schedule and Participant Data for April 2024. This document contains details about program offerings, participant numbers, and court availability from April to June 2024. Your task is to analyze the current setup and propose ways to improve program efficiency, optimize court usage, and adjust coach assignments.
Facility Overview:
- Courts: 2 courts available
- Days: Monday to Friday
- Time: 3:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Your Task:
- Evaluate Demand: Review the participant numbers for April 2024. Are certain classes consistently full while others have lower participation?
- Analyze Court Usage: Look at how the courts are being utilized. Are there time slots where courts are underused or where overbooking is a problem?
- Coach Assignments: Review the current coach assignments. Are there opportunities to optimize coach schedules or redistribute workloads to better meet demand?
Next Steps:
Based on the data provided:
- Suggest how to adjust the program schedule to optimize court usage.
- Propose changes to coach assignments to balance workloads and improve efficiency.
- Recommend modifications to the program offerings to better align with participant demand and enhance the overall performance of the facility.