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.
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?
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.