Automating Space Reservations Allows Park & Rec Staff to Serve the Community

Spotz October 5, 2021

Automating Space Reservations Frees Up Staff Time

Parks and recreation centers are vital for their communities. Their spaces provide a safe and positive environment for individuals and groups of all ages to come together. These facilities should be a central part of your community, a place where people can go and have a good time, work up a sweat, and meet others.

Your staff is probably there because they love working with the community, not selling to it.

Allowing community members who need space to search for, find, and book space on their own means your team only needs to help them at the end, instead of guiding them through every step.

Build Awareness of Your Facility

Traditional marketing is expensive. Digital marketing can be effective if you have the budget, skill, and time to implement it correctly. If done well, it can free your staff to spend time helping guests rather than working on getting your space in front of potential renters.

This leads to staff having to do extra legwork to fill your spaces and bring in community members to serve, taking time from those that are there.

Having a tool that can promote the spaces without spending additional time can free your staff for creating a great user experience. Look for a tool that:

Describes your facility and space thoroughly
Highlights unique qualities and features of space
Shows alternative uses of spaces

Be Available for Community Members

Your team should be equipped to help your visitors before, during, and after booking space. Create a culture that no phone call or email gets left behind.

However, if your staff is busy on the phone or answering emails about space rentals, the details may fall through the cracks, which could damage your reputation when a customer has a bad experience.

Here are a couple of ways to cut down on wasted time:

Keep your website, local directory listings, and other public-facing channels up-to-date.
Use facility scheduling software that allows your community to book space at their convenience--no PDF downloads or extra phone calls required!
Communicate holiday hours, availability, and closures on social media. Making these changes to your page profile will not only put the facilities in front of eyeballs organically but will also keep your staff from having to answer the same questions over and over.

Communicate to Build Your Community

Make it easy for people to find and book the kind of spaces they want. Assure them their events will run smoothly by making the booking and reservation process easy and customer-friendly.

You can do this by keeping communications simple and straightforward. Automating certain responses can also free up staff time.

Reply to questions immediately
Provide clear descriptions of your available spaces
Offer traditional payment methods such as credit cards, checks, over-the-phone or other similar payment methods.
Send thank-you emails or follow-up surveys to let them know their experience was important

Automate Your Facility Booking

Many organizations, including Parks and Rec departments, are facing shortages. Shortages of budgets and staff. While it is essential to meet specific revenue goals by booking spaces as fully as possible, your team wants to meet the needs of their community, not be a call center or data processor. They want to get their community members active, enjoying nature, learning about their environment, exploring new places, interacting together. The more you can automate the marketing and booking of your spaces with a solution like Spotz, the more time your staff can be there for the community.

Here are some of the benefits of automating the booking process:

Invest less time and resources while adding extra income through increased bookings—a system that pays for itself
Customers can make much of the booking themselves—this saves you time, staff, and resources
Automation helps reduce data entry errors when booking spaces
You can accept online payments more easily, reducing time chasing payment
Parks & Rec departments have more control over the spaces they make available for community members to rent

Even as the world continues to grapple with the uncertainty of COVID-19, community members are searching for spaces and resources for their hobbies, sports, events, and business meetings. Make your process of booking spaces easier by automating the process with facility management software. By putting more of the booking process in the hands of your community members, your staff can skip the selling and free up their time to engage with renters and provide a positive (and hopefully recurring) experience.