Booking System Updates // May 2023
Back in January of 2022, I created a reservation system that might work for a small Warhammer club of roughly 35 people. Folks could say how long they needed the table for, then choose what time to play. It was simple and beautiful.
We were open 5 days a week, had four tables, and we were never full. We didn’t even have dedicated hours because some days there wasn’t a single game scheduled.
How times have changed.
With our community refusing to get less beautiful or friendly, we’ve been forced to add more tables and increase our hours. These strategies are beginning to have diminishing returns, though—about ⅓ of members reported in Community Survey 004 that they’d recently had trouble making bookings when they wanted.
Stefan and I both believe the best thing about Waystone is the community we’re all cultivating, but still the practical bargain we made when you punched your card in for a membership is that we’d provide you a table to play games when you felt like it.
I was doing some serious mental gymnastics recently, trying to think of how to address increasing demand for tables, until an important problem-solving maxim that helps me with my motorcycle came to mind:
Start with what’s simple. Start with what’s easy.
It was time to give the booking system a fresh look.
Current System on an Average Day:
On a weekday, each table theoretically has 6.5 hours of bookable time.
Tables can be booked for 2-5 hours, but 3- and 4-hour bookings are most popular.
Bookings are often made near the middle of the available hours, which means even 3-hour sessions occupy the table for an entire day.
One of the 5 reservations on that chart will usually cancel, and without a waitlist we may or may not be able to find someone to fill it.
The best thing about this current system is the theoretical freedom it allows. But when even our shortest bookings take up a table for the whole day, choices suddenly become very restricted, and folks sometimes have to schedule games up to a week in advance.
New (Piloted) Booking System:
Edit: After receiving club feedback we’ve opted to use only one skirmish table. The following is still relevant for explaining the thinking behind that new way of scheduling a table.
The good news is that I think I’ve found a way to do things more efficiently without cramming more people into the space, making people feel rushed, or making our club less accessible.
The fundamental change is that two tables are now classified as “Skirmish tables”. These tables can each accommodate two ‘Skirmish slot’ bookings per day.
Skirmish slots are special bookings of a little over three hours, and they start at set times each day. You don’t need to use the whole time—if you think your game will only take 2 hours, using a Skirmish slot still helps ensure that the table gets two bookings that day.
Three out of our five tables still use the old, more flexible system—we’re just calling these ‘Flexible Game Bookings’ now.
Note: You can still use ‘Flexible Game Bookings’ for bookings of 3 hours or less if you simply want more scheduling options, or if all of the Skirmish Slots are full.
So, if most of the tables are still using the old system, why is this such a big deal?
Think about it this way: Ensuring two tables can each accommodate two games a day amounts to a 40% increase in booking capacity on average—the biggest we’ve ever seen in the history of our club (even more than when we added a new table, or when we’ve opened an additional days of the week).
And the waitlist works now.
Once this update goes live, we’ll also have a working waitlist system. So if you’d like to book on a specific day but nothing is available, you can ask Flexbooker to just message you as soon as someone else cancels.
Take advantage of Garrett’s special impromptu cancellation hobby tables while you still can.
//
Probably enough information for the day.
Tell me what you love or hate about this new system when I show everyone the updated booking page live over Discord tonight (Thursday) at 8PM PST.
Cheers,
Dustin
