Filling your off-peak classes
The 10am on a Tuesday will never look like the 17:30. But half-empty is a choice — here is how to read the numbers and fix the gaps.
Almost every studio has the same shape: evenings and Saturday mornings sell themselves, and there is a stretch of mid-morning and mid-afternoon that quietly loses money. The instinct is to cut those classes. Sometimes that is right. Often the class is fine and the audience is simply the wrong one.
Look at fill rate, not headcount
Six people in a twelve-bike room is 50%. Six people in an eight-mat studio is 75%. Headcount tells you almost nothing on its own; fill rate against capacity is the number that lets you compare a Tuesday 10am to a Thursday 18:00 honestly. Sort your classes by it and the picture usually resolves in about a minute.
Ask who is free at 10am
Not your evening members — they are at work. Off-peak audiences are different people: parents after school drop-off, shift workers, students, retirees, people who work from home. A class that fails at 10am with an evening-style format often succeeds with a format aimed at who is actually available.
- A shorter 45-minute session for the school-run window
- A gentler or technique-focused class that suits an older group
- A beginner-friendly slot, which is far less intimidating than a packed evening room
- An off-peak-only price or pack, if you would rather discount than run empty
Fix the discovery problem first
Before rewriting the timetable, check whether people can even see it. If your schedule lives only inside the app, everyone who has not signed up yet has no idea what you offer. An embedded schedule on your own website — live, with spots remaining — turns your site from a brochure into a booking page, and it is the cheapest change on this list.
A number worth checking
Look at how far ahead members can book. If your booking window is seven days and your regulars plan two weeks out, you are invisible at exactly the moment they are deciding. Widening the window costs nothing and often fills the quieter slots first, because the people who plan ahead are the ones with inflexible schedules.
Give it a real trial, then decide
Change one thing — the time, the format, or the price — and run it for six weeks. Anything shorter is noise: a rainy fortnight or a school holiday will move your numbers more than your change did. If after six weeks the fill rate has not moved, that slot genuinely does not have an audience, and cutting it frees your instructor for something that does.
Studios that grow are not the ones with the busiest evenings — everyone has those. They are the ones who worked out what their quiet hours are actually for.
Pulse Studio does the admin part of this.
Bookings, waitlists, packages and invoicing for South African studios — free to start, pricing on the website, no sales call required.