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“Open Table” for Yoga Bookings?

February 3rd, 2010

As a busy yoga enthu­si­ast, I some­times won­der what would hap­pen if yoga stu­dios within a given metro area agreed to an “Open Table” model for class book­ings. (Open Table is a cen­tral­ized reser­va­tion ser­vice for restau­rants that oper­ates in major cities, includ­ing iPhone and other smart­phone apps.)

In an ideal world I’d take 6–8 weekly classes in suc­ces­sion from the same teacher at the same stu­dio, to ben­e­fit from her care­ful class plan­ning and sequenc­ing. But in 2 years of tak­ing classes I’ve never been able to attend all 8 classes due to fam­ily or work-related sched­ule con­flicts. As a result I’ve joined a sec­ond local stu­dio to have an alter­nate place where I can take classes when I face a con­flict with my pri­mary stu­dio. Each one uses Mind­Body for book­ing pur­poses, so I have two sep­a­rate accounts now.

From a busy student’s per­spec­tive, it would be really great if I could book classes using a cen­tral­ized reser­va­tion sys­tem that showed me all the classes avail­able today (or at later dates) within, say, a 20-mile radius. For each class on offer I’d want to see infor­ma­tion about the yoga style or tra­di­tion, the teacher, the rel­a­tive dif­fi­culty of the class, pre­req­ui­sites (if any), time, loca­tion, pric­ing, etc. Like the Open Table restau­rant model it would be nice to see some­thing com­pa­ra­ble to menus and pho­tographs of the venue, if it’s a stu­dio I’m unfa­mil­iar with. I’d also want to be able to fil­ter the class list­ings by teacher name, yoga tra­di­tion (such as Anusara), dif­fi­culty level, etc.

This raises a larger ques­tion of the busi­ness model. Would I pay the cen­tral book­ing ser­vice, and have it dis­burse funds to the stu­dio? (My per­sonal pref­er­ence as a stu­dent.) Would there be a finder’s fee paid by the book­ing ser­vice to the stu­dio, with stu­dents pay­ing for the class directly to the stu­dio? I don’t know. Cer­tainly from the student’s per­spec­tive, being able to book and pay online in a sin­gle trans­ac­tion is the most con­ve­nient approach.

What I do know is, I’d take more classes if such a book­ing sys­tem were avail­able, one that allowed me to book and take classes on the spur of the moment, as time per­mits. Such an approach could be finan­cially ben­e­fi­cial to the stu­dio own­ers, if they could fill up more classes… They might even offer spe­cials on classes that are gen­er­ally sparsely attended.

Per­haps this is some­thing that Mind­body could explore.

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4 Comments so far ↓

  • Brian Castellani // Feb 5, 2010 at 12:21 am

    Just start­ing out on blog­ging so please be kind.

    Ex-Yoga Jour­nal employee, cur­rently Yoga Busi­ness News. I too got a google alert and would love to dis­cuss this.

    Mind­body is a pos sys­tem, that sends newslet­ters and is the largest fish in the sea.

    There are other com­pa­nies out there. But mind­body has locally and inter­na­tion­ally cor­nered the yoga mar­ket. There data is all up to date. Unless you indi­vid­u­ally code your site to pull data from each indi­vid­ual Mind­body sched­ule page, you wouldn’t be able to make it to mar­ket. Their iPhone app is instan­ta­neous and works much like you describe above Christine.

    OpenTable gets fees every time they book a din­ner, this could work the same way maybe.

    • Christine // Feb 5, 2010 at 9:48 am

      Brian, good luck with your new blog and your gig with Yoga Busi­ness News.

      Thanks for shar­ing your per­spec­tive on Mind­body. Note that I have no busi­ness affil­i­a­tion with Mind­body, nor am I (at least for now) in the busi­ness of yoga. I’m sim­ply an enthu­si­as­tic stu­dent who can envi­sion ways to broaden the prac­tice of yoga. Mak­ing classes more acces­si­ble (from a sched­ul­ing con­ve­nience POV) is one way to do that.

      Hav­ing said that, I’d be happy to dis­cuss this idea with you.

  • Ivan // Feb 3, 2010 at 9:50 pm

    Hi Chris­tine,

    I run Reser­va­tion Genie, a web-based ser­vice that com­petes in con­cept to Open Table. I use Google Alerts to notify any time a blog­ger talks about them…hence how I found this arti­cle. Our model is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than Open Table in that we are book­ing for restau­rants, tours, and night­clubs. We’re work­ing on golf courses and rental busi­nesses. Inter­est­ingly enough…I don’t think it would be too hard to add Yoga stu­dios. I’m not sure how Mind­Body works, but our sys­tem does allow you to search for avail­abil­ity at all restau­rants in your town for spe­cific times and party sizes. So if we had Yoga, we could imple­ment that easily.

    If you’d like to chat about it…I’d be inter­ested in hear­ing your thoughts.

    Cheers,
    Ivan
    Reser­va­tion Genie

    • Christine // Feb 4, 2010 at 3:21 pm

      Ivan, thanks for the thought­ful com­ment. I’d be happy to chat with you about Reser­va­tion Genie and its appro­pri­ate­ness for coor­di­nat­ing yoga book­ings; how­ever, I have no busi­ness affil­i­a­tion with Mind­Body, so would not be in a posi­tion to put any of our ideas into prac­tice. Given this, do you still want a conversation?