Have you ever heard the phrase, “if you’re not moving forward, you’re falling back?” With today’s advancements in automation and artificial intelligence, this is more true than ever. Your indoor golf facility’s success is entirely dependent upon your ability to adapt to the latest technology.
That said, nearly every task can—and frankly, should be—automated to gain a competitive edge. In fact, by forgoing automation, you’re not just doing yourself a disservice, you’re also giving the competition a head start.
How?
- Limited operating hours means limited revenue.
- More time spent on laborious tasks means less time growing your business.
- More manual tasks mean more overhead.
In this article, we’ll show you how to sidestep these roadblocks, create a fully automated golf simulator venue, and drive more revenue.
Choose an automated booking system
To start, you need to select a booking system that works with a 24/7 business model, not against it. Too often the opposite happens: you end up adapting your process to fit the tool, leading to more inefficiencies than you had before and undermining the very reason you sought a new solution in the first place.
Avoid this by securing a system with these four features at the outset:
- Automated bookings
- Custom booking information, collected automatically
- Automated payment processing
- Integrations
Automated bookings
Time has a cost, and by automating bookings, you’re cutting out hours of work that are better spent growing your business.
Here’s how the booking process should go: A user opens your booking app, picks a time slot, adds any required details, pays using their saved credit card, and leaves the app—that’s it. Booking’s accomplished in under 30 seconds.
And for you? There should be nothing left on your to-do list.
With AllBooked, it’s literally that simple. All reservation details, including custom information for bookings, are automatically populated into your admin portal. From there, your customer’s payment information goes directly into AllBooked’s payment processor, Stripe, without any manual work required. Below, we’ll take a deeper look at these features that make the process automatic, allowing you to run your golf simulator venue 24/7.
Custom booking information, collected automatically
Do you find yourself constantly juggling one-off customer requests—like equipment requirements or other booking accommodations? Forget the sticky notes.
For a truly seamless booking experience, look for a solution that lets you capture all the details you need for a reservation directly within the booking interface. AllBooked makes it easy to add custom fields, like free lines of text, dropdowns, number inputs, or checkboxes, so you can gather all the information you need from your customers, and omit everything you don’t.
Further, as a venue owner, you can include detailed descriptions about each space, so your customers know exactly what to expect about amenities. Think about all you could accomplish in the time you currently spend manually responding to golfer inquiries.
Automated payment processing + user-specific pricing
To successfully run a fully automated golf simulator facility, you need a seamless way to collect payments and charge precisely what’s required—without a single human touchpoint.
That’s where AllBooked’s pricing rules and automated payment system, Stripe, come into play. The platform allows your customers to complete transactions at rates you define—based on user, time of day, day of week, space, or duration—right within the booking window. With the option to pay using saved credit cards and mobile wallets, checkout is easy, making way for more revenue.
The benefits are two-fold:
- Your customers enjoy a smooth booking experience.
- Your golf simulator venue can run 24/7 without paying frontdesk staff, helping you generate revenue without any additional overhead.
Payment processing is just the start. All back-end financial tasks—from transaction reconciliation to reporting—are also taken care of by Stripe, giving you hours of your week back. Your only job is to hit “download” when you want your reports.
Integrations
A non-negotiable for a 24/7 venue? A booking solution that supports integrations.
Integrations are powerful connections between software that exchange data from one platform to another, allowing you to optimize workflows and run a hands-off facility.
Here’s how they help:
- Transfer data automatically between systems, eliminating manual data entry.
- Trigger actions in one software based on specific events in another, so you don't have to remember to update systems yourself, and tasks execute automatically.
#1: Smart locks. 24/7 access without additional staff.
In the past, running a 24/7 golf simulator facility came with steep costs—both in time and money. With extended staffing, higher utility bills, and security concerns, you couldn’t be sure the extra income would outweigh the operational burden.
Yet, with automation, you no longer have to make a tradeoff. Smart locks, or remotely controlled electronic locks, allow automatic access management to your facilities. This means that you no longer need to be on-site to let customers into your bays.
You might be thinking: Sure, I can unlock the door from my phone, but I’d still have to remember to do it every time. That’s where AllBooked takes things a step further.
With our platform, smart locks can be programmed to open doors in alignment with reservations, creating a fully automated golf simulator experience—no additional staffing required. This allows members to make bookings beyond traditional operating hours, cuts overhead, and quite literally opens the door to more revenue.
Why limit your earning potential? With AllBooked, you can:
- Automatically unlock a door at the time of a booking, with customizable lock durations ranging from 3 to 30 seconds.
- Schedule an unlock period that lasts for the entire duration of the booking.
- Issue a single-access link valid for the entire duration of the booking, providing flexible and secure entry
#2: Smart thermostats. Automated HVAC to save on utilities.
You might be wondering, with 24/7 golf simulator access, how can I keep utility costs from spiraling? Once again, automation’s the answer. With recent advancements in IoT devices, like smart thermostats, you can let technology handle climate control for you.
The benefits of integrating smart thermostats with your booking system:
- Maintain a comfortable environment for your clients, without needing to remember to turn on and off your heating and cooling
- Keep energy costs low by staying in control of your HVAC
Choose a booking solution that integrates seamlessly with smart thermostats. With AllBooked, heating and cooling can be automatically adjusted based on booking schedules, so you can deliver a comfortable climate-controlled experience to your customers while keeping costs at bay.
The added benefit? You won’t have to remind your employees to turn off the lights or AC, so you can avoid both the conversations and costs entirely using automation.
#3: Document signature. Sent immediately when a booking’s made.
Do you have customers sign an agreement before they play? For your guests to access your facility 24/7 without increased staffing costs, you’ll need to cut out physical paperwork.
That said, it’s essential to choose a booking system that integrates with popular e-signature platforms, like Docusign and PandaDoc. AllBooked integrates with both, and automates the entire process: as soon as a booking is made, an email with the required document is sent directly to your guest’s inbox. The functionality goes even further, allowing you to route forms to multiple parties, and control the exact signing order. Within the e-signature platforms themselves, you can also track who signed what and when, and store all completed documents in one centralized online location.
What’s a 24/7 facility look like in action?
We’re glad you asked. Using AllBooked, Liberty Hill Athletics successfully runs their facility 24/7, 365 days a year. The team has a customer-base with diverse schedules, so they needed a way to make booking accessible at all times, otherwise they’d be stifling revenue. Using integrations between AllBooked to their smart lock and HVAC systems, the team opened their doors to off-peak bookings—and more revenue. When a user books outside of traditional operating hours, like at midnight, the system automatically unlocks the door and turns on the HVAC system, delivering self-service access to their facilities.
In today’s competitive, tech-driven world, the old saying “work smarter, not harder” rings particularly true. Automation's the only way to stay ahead, and AllBooked’s the tool that makes it happen.
Choose to earn more while working less, and get in touch with us to see how we can help.
