Requiring online reservations 48 hours in advance with a manual review step is costing Bowlerama same-week and walk-up bookings that a real-time system would capture instantly.
Why they need it
Bowlerama's own site tells customers that online reservation requests need 48 hours notice and up to 24 hours of manual processing, and that anyone booking sooner has to phone the centre - a hard wall against same-week and walk-up revenue that a modern venue with instant online checkout would happily capture. A real-time lane booking and deposit-payment system (showing live lane availability by time slot, taking the deposit on the spot, and confirming instantly) would remove that 48-hour bottleneck entirely and free front-desk staff from manually processing every online request. A companion league member portal - for standings, schedules and re-registration - would also modernize a core recurring revenue stream (bowling leagues) that currently has no self-serve online presence at all.
Tech gaps
No real-time online lane booking - the site explicitly tells same-week customers to call instead; deposit collection is a manual step rather than instant checkout; no visible customer loyalty/rewards program or league member portal on the public site
Current tech
Website credited as 'Powered by LD Group'; online reservation requests require 48 hours advance notice and go through a manual review that can take up to 24 hours, with a credit card deposit collected separately; anything sooner requires a phone call
Selling a portal + ops tool
PlaybookA customer-facing portal and the internal tool behind it, built together so the data is entered once.
- Lead with whichever side hurts more today; the other side is phase two.
- One data model means the customer sees exactly what the office sees.
Objections (1)
- “That is a big project.”
- It is two small ones in a row. You see the first working before you commit to the second.