Every padel school has them: lessons that are 70% full while ten players sit on the waiting list. The problem isn't occupancy — it's matching. Who calls whom? Who fits which slot? PadelPlanning solves this with the Open Spots Matcher.
The problem: empty slots at the last minute
A player cancels on Thursday morning for a lesson taking place on Friday evening. You message the group chat, get five replies, ring the first person who answered and hope they're at the right level too. This is time-consuming, error-prone and only scales so far.
How the Open Spots Matcher works
As soon as a player cancels, the Open Spots Matcher scans the waiting list for players who: (1) are at the right level for that lesson, (2) are available at that time, and (3) don't already have a lesson in the same time block. The best-fitting candidate automatically receives an email invitation with a direct payment link. If they don't accept within two hours, the invitation moves to the next person on the list.
Results in practice
Schools actively using the Open Spots Matcher report an average occupancy increase of 12 percentage points within the first quarter. No-show impact falls from an average of 8% to under 2%. That translates directly into revenue: for a school running 20 lessons a week at an average price of €18 per lesson, 6% extra occupancy is worth more than €1,100 a month.
Set up in 3 steps
Activating the Open Spots Matcher takes less than five minutes. Step 1: go to Player Management → Waitlist settings. Step 2: set how long a player has to respond, per level (default: 2 hours). Step 3: switch on automatic confirmation emails. From then on the system does the rest.