On line court booking is live

The on line court booking system is now active and working. The testing phase did throw up some problems which I have resolved in the main, however there are bound to be a few more, so please be patient and considerate with your fellow members and me in the roll out phase.

How to book

1. Register with ClubSpark and create a log in. Members who have not registered have been sent an invitation with a link to do so. For family members, individual family members can book a court, there needs to be an email address on each family member profile to which an invitation can be sent. If any family members wish to have their own email on their profile, the main contact can enter that and I will be able to send the invitation and link.

2. Go to the Medbourne Tennis Club website:

Clubspark.lta.org.uk/medbournetennisclub

Sign in using the same login route used at registration. Once in you can go to the ‘court booking’ page and the calendar will come up. Click onto the day and start time you wish to book a court, a box will appear with a drop down list of 30 minute slots. You can book up to four 30 minute slots (max of 120 minutes per booking). Then add the participants to the booking by clicking ‘adds participant’ and type in the first name and surname, if they are a member they will appear automatically. Then click on the green box to save and then go onto add the other participants in the same way. If you have a guest playing then their name must also be put in as a participant, they will then appear as ‘guest’ on the booking.

It is very important that all participants are put onto a booking, this facility allows us to monitor who is using the courts and also can be used for contact tracing, which follows the guidance from the LTA in this stage of the coronavirus, contact and tracing phase implementation.

3. Confirm the booking on the box and you will receive an email with your booking details. This email can then be printed out or used on your Smartphone, to take to the court when you play as evidence of your booking in case of any disputes!

4. If you need to cancel a booking, this can be done either through a link on the confirmation email or by signing into your ClubSpark account and editing your booking that appears in your profile. Lastly, I can cancel for members if there are any difficulties.

Booking rules have been applied to the court schedules, members have to tick a box to agree to the booking rules when confirming their booking:

Booking rules

1. The courts are open 365 days a year, 8.00am – 10.00
2. Booking slots will be for 30 minutes
3. Courts 1&3 can be booked on the hour, court 2 can be booked on the half hour, this will stagger some of the play times and assist with social distancing
4. Regular or adhoc club events such as club night, mix ins, tournaments and open days etc will be booked as far in advance as possible by the administrators
5. Coaches can book longer slots for group coaching sessions
6. Individual coaching sessions must be booked by the member
7. League captains can book longer slots within agreed times of the day for league matches in the summer and winter
8. When booking a session the member needs to put a first name and surname. Names will only be seen by logged in members when using the booking sheet. The booking sheet on the website which can be viewed by the public will not have names against the bookings
9. Bookings can be made up to 7 days in advance
10. A new booking can only  be made after midnight for the next 7 day period
11. Up to four 30 minute slots (total of 120 mins) can be booked per day by a member
12. A  booking can be made  every day for the advance period

With all these rules in place a member can: Make 1 booking up to 7 days in advance, every day with a maximum time of 120 minutes per booking.

1. Cancellation of a booking must be made a minimum of two hours before the booked time.

As said previously, if these booking rules do not seem to work for the majority they can be tweaked to make the system run smoothly for our members, just let your committee members know your issues and we will assess each request to see what can be done.

As we are still in a lock down phase and are not running any club events, club night and Wednesday morning mix in are not booked out on the schedule at present. Once we can recommence club events, these times will be block booked and members will not be able to book courts during these times