Public Bookings lets anyone book your courts without a member account. Visitors pick a time, pay via Stripe, and get an instant confirmation. Your admin team doesn't need to lift a finger. It's one of the recent features we've shipped on Hello Club V2, and it's available now on Standard plans and above.
Let anyone book your courts; no account needed
If you manage a club, you know the drill. A casual player rings up to hire a court for an hour. Your admin volunteer takes the call, checks the calendar, writes it down, and manually enters the booking. Multiply that by a dozen walk-ins and phone calls each week, and you've got a real drain on your team's time; time that could go toward tons of other things that need you. That's the problem Public Bookings solves.
What Public Bookings actually does
Public Bookings gives your club a dedicated, publicly accessible bookings page. Visitors and non-members can view availability, choose a court or facility, and complete a booking entirely on their own; no account, no login, no friction.
All a visitor needs to provide is their name, email address, and phone number. They pick a date, time, and court, choose a booking mode, pay, and receive an instant confirmation email. And if you manage lighting and access control through Hello Club, that confirmation includes a PIN so they can let themselves in.
What your admin team sees
From the admin side, public bookings appear in your bookings calendar highlighted in blue, so they're easy to spot at a glance. You can view each booker's contact details, filter between public and member bookings, and export the data for reporting. You can also collect extra information from public bookers using custom fields, and capture individual visitor names if your club needs them.
Why it matters for your club's revenue
Every visitor who can't easily book online is potential revenue that doesn't convert. A public page that's open 24/7 means casual players can book and pay the moment the idea strikes them; not just during office hours when someone's available to take a call.
Research on booking behaviour consistently shows that 24/7 availability drives significantly higher rebooking rates, and the same logic applies to sports facilities.
Off-peak utilisation is another real opportunity. Courts that sit empty on Tuesday mornings or Sunday afternoons represent lost income. A public bookings page makes those slots visible and bookable to anyone searching for a court; not just your existing members.
How it fits into your existing workflows
Public Bookings doesn't sit outside your system; it's fully integrated with Hello Club's existing bookings calendar and overview. Member bookings and public bookings live side by side, so your staff have a single view of what's happening across all your courts and facilities at any time.
Because visitors pay at the time of booking (Hello Club processes payments through Stripe), there's no chasing money after the fact. The booking is confirmed, the payment is collected, and your calendar is updated automatically. Your admin team doesn't need to touch it.
You can also use custom fields to capture any additional information you need from public bookers; things like whether they're a first-time visitor or what equipment they'll need. That data is stored against the booking and available for export.
Because Public Bookings feeds directly into your Hello Club calendar alongside member bookings, availability is always accurate. There's no separate spreadsheet to reconcile, no risk of a phone booking conflicting with an online one.
A few things to note
Public Bookings currently doesn't support free bookings, booking changes, cancellations, or automatic refunds. We recommend letting your public bookers know upfront to contact the club directly if they need to make changes. Clear messaging on your public bookings page or in the confirmation email goes a long way here.
Public Bookings as part of Hello Club's broader platform
Public Bookings is an upgrade to Hello Club's court and facility booking capability, which is built to help clubs get optimal utilisation from their spaces.
The full bookings feature set covers member self-service, access control integration, activity configuration, and now public-facing bookings; all in one place. That's the broader promise of Hello Club: a single, modern platform that combines member management, facility and booking management, financial tools (including Xero integration for accounting), club communications and events, so your committee and admin team have everything they need without juggling multiple systems. It's designed for clubs that want to run efficiently and spend less time on administration.
Hello Club gives committees real data and insights to support better decisions; whether that's understanding peak booking times, tracking casual visitor revenue, or identifying which courts are underutilised.
Ready to turn on Public Bookings?
We've put together step-by-step guides to get you up and running:
- Setting Up & Managing Public Bookings: Everything club admins need to enable the public booking page, configure activities, and manage public bookings.
- How Users Make a Public Booking: a simple walkthrough you can share with your visitors.
Take a few minutes to read through the guides, switch on your public bookings page, and make it easier than ever for anyone to book at your club.
If you are considering Hello Club and would like to see the full platform in action, get in touch with our team.
