One of the biggest benefits of using an automated booking system is that it makes life easier — for you and your customers.

With Hivelink, parents can create an account, book, and pay in minutes. It’s a seamless process, and once the booking is placed  participants are automatically added to your registers

But over time, that convenience can backfire. When your booking process is too easy, some customers start to leave it later and later to confirm — often waiting until days before the club starts to book their child’s place.

And as most providers know, a sudden surge of last minute bookings or increase in numbers will wreak havoc on any existing planning or preparation.

The natural response is to tighten up your process — maybe by setting a booking cut-off rule.

For example, preventing new bookings within 24, 48 or 72 hours of a session starting.

This approach works in theory, and is ideal if your programmes require extensive preparation or resources that have to be ordered in advance.

But in practice? If you’re at 80% capacity and a new customer messages your social media page looking for two spaces for next week’s holiday club, you’ll almost certainly lift that restriction and take the booking.

Because at the end of the day, every provider wants to welcome new families and maximise their revenue.

So the real issue isn’t that parents can book too late. It’s that they do book too late – Or, there is no reason for them not to book late.

With Hivelink you can create a discount that is automatically applied to when the defined criteria are met. In this case you can define:

You can even make the offer exclusive to returning customers who booked your previous campaign or families in your VIP Membership Scheme. This small change encourages families to act earlier — helping you forecast attendance, allocate staff, and organise activities well in advance.

Some providers on the Hivelink Network have gone further and created a series of gradually reducing discounts – This means there is a middle ground so those parents that just miss the biggest saving still get something, but are reminded to book even earlier next time for even better pricing.

For example: Early bird bookings – 20% off for first 7 days, followed by advance bookings – 10% off from 7 – 14 days, then full price – From 14 days until programme start:

This also allows providers an additional touch point in their marketing strategy:

For many providers, this has completely changed the rhythm of their bookings — shifting most activity into the early period.

Some now even treat the discounted price as their base price when forecasting revenue, with anything booked later treated as additional income.

Analysis of one client using this approach to encourage early bookings for their School Holiday Sports Clubs saw 72% of bookings placed within 14 days of publishing their Easter Holiday Campaign.

The benefits of having a more time to prepare your activities are endless, with an earlier idea of attendance, providers can focus their energy on:

All the things that ensure your participants have a brilliant time in your care, leading to glowing reviews and years of repeat custom.