Courtesy of Omnify, a SwimSwam partner.
As the pool season begins, a fresh dive after months of restrictions is a huge respite! However, reopening pools this summer comes with its own set of challenges. Well, again!
What’s the good news? If 2020 was about facing a catastrophe with resilience, 2021 is going proactive and as fluid as water!
Let’s get the community pools, aquatic centers, and swim schools on board with something Safe, Smart, and Stressfree- that pool facilities should be using! An intuitive Swimming Pool Reservation System! Why? Because-
- It allows pool customers to choose a date, picking a slot, book and pay directly through your website, giving them the best user experience!
- Gives fair and equitable pool access.
- Automates booking confirmations, follow-ups for drastic reduction of no-shows eliminating extra man-hours.
- And, it’s a no-brainer!
Why Omnify?
With so many scheduling and reservation systems in the market, what is so unique about Omnify? We spoke to Omnify to understand what’s under the hood.
Omnify is an unrivaled reservation system very popular for swimming pools across the globe. It is intricately tailored to meet any dynamic demands and fine-tune to different pool facilities with different needs. In 2020 alone, Omnify enabled 1000+ pools to reopen safely amidst COVID-19 with over 2 million member bookings and safe check-ins. For Omnify, it is all about creating a safe swim ecosystem for pool communities and a system that’s a perfect alternative to pen, paper, or excel sheets!
As new guidelines on restrictions are being rolled out in several states in the US, lifting of ‘stay at home’ orders and other COVID-19 guidelines may vary state-wise as per surge in cases. Health Officials fear the occurrence of new outbreaks in the context of easing too many restrictions too soon. However, pool facilities that intend to open can review this guide to reopening swimming pools with a reservation system.
- How to manage pool capacity best?
Capacity Management may be the buzzword since the Pandemic- but ‘6 feet apart’ it is! Pool operators are constantly on a lookout for a system to limit capacity while maintaining necessary decorum for the safest possible pool experience for their members. The pool facilities would otherwise put up stickers like ‘6 feet Apart’, ‘Maintain Social Distancing’. But is that sufficient in ensuring an absolute level of social distancing? Or raise an alarm every time there’s a violation? Maybe not. That’s where a pool reservation system comes into play. It allows facilities to overcome the challenges of manually limiting capacity and provide a sustainable capacity management solution.
Omnify helps pool owners in capacity management by creating customizable ‘Blocks of pool-time’ to manage crowd, cap number of attendees for specific blocks of time, add scheduled buffer time for sanitization between visits and thereby manage controlled visits and capacity with ease!
(Omnify holds amazing monthly webinars to give step-by-step walkthroughs to operate pools in the best possible way and other updates)
- E-Signing Liability Waivers and COVID-19 Declaration Form
After you have set up a system that works for you according to your state guidelines for capacity threshold, you must minimize any risk of business liabilities or from COVID-19 infections. How to ensure that each person walking into your facility is hale and hearty? A booking reservation system allows the waiver process to be incorporated into the booking system itself. Pool facilities can go completely paperless with this pre-booking liability-waiver signing compulsion.
With Omnify, pool facilities can enforce an obligatory pre-booking electronic liability waiver and an additional COVID-19 declaration form that’s customizable. It helps facilities to get complete information about a member’s medical condition, travel history, contact tracing, etc. It ensures that pool premises are entirely safe and no threat to the community at large.
- Contactless QR Check-ins
The next relevant step for a pool facility is seamless and safer check-ins. Information on check ins, no-shows, canceled slots, etc., are critical for smoother pool operations. Plus, 2020 brought newer safety concerns. Hence, QR check-ins! It is a tech-savvy, touchless alternative to admit members inside your facility without the need of access cards, keys, magnetic strips, or signatures that require touching shared surfaces. Just put up a ready-made QR code on your facility, and people can use their phones to check-in! ‘Contactless check-ins work as lifeguards outside of the pools and reflect a facility’s concern for its members.
Alternatively, people can also be checked in via front desk by entering their first name. Omnify’s check-in mechanism is conducive for pool facilities in tracking detailed reports of attendance and occupancy, managing schedules, canceling slots with a process to notify members for the same. Check out Omnify’s Check Ins View to manage visitors and attendees in one place.
Pool reservation systems take care of every aspect and help facilities to be right on the map! You can give members the liberty to choose from given pool slots at their convenience. They can either go for easy signup or a speedy guest booking. With Omnify, signed-up members can book for themselves and their family.
But, what about setting restrictions on bookings? It’s a concern raised by many pool facilities where one person books several slots. A seamless way to set up the right amount of restrictions with fair and equitable access is via a reservation system only.
- How to set up the right Booking Restrictions and Limitations?
Omnify calls this well-thought-out feature as Booking Restrictions. With this feature enabled, pool admins can restrict the number of slots a member can book at a given time frame. Where on one hand it allows pools to manage capacity, it also secures the right of another community member to not miss out, making it easy for everyone to get equal access to the pools!
Another aspect of booking restrictions is membership management. Memberships help you create a community of customers closer to your brand by giving them access to specific services and offers not open to all. So, facilities can limit bookings to their members only.
With Omnify, Membership Management is plain sailing! With ‘member only access’ enabled, only members can book a reservation. For any non-member or someone with membership dues trying to book, the system automatically shows an error.
- Automate your Communications
With so much going on, pool admins should not feel the pressure to handle back and forth communication. Be it booking confirmations, scheduling, event registrations, waitlist emails, or payment reminders, all can be done as soon as an action is triggered. To streamline communication, Omnify has the power of auto-emails. All this could be happening in the background while you sip your favorite cup of latte!
Adaptability is what gets one rolling. So all you folks who’re trying to optimize their pool operations, rely on cost-effective methods, do check out Omnify. Omnify is simple, robust, professional and dependable, and will undoubtedly get you both new and returning swimmers!
Ah! Let’s not miss the fact that Omnify was awarded in 12 categories (Summer 2020) by G2 Crowd!
Get in touch with Omnify anytime for a lot more information that has not been covered in this piece. You can also follow them on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.