Is it a Good Idea to Build an App for Sports Facilities Rental?

If you’re a sports person, who can’t live without activities, chances are you have rented a playfield once or twice over the past year. And statistics show that you’re not alone. 4 out of 10 people engage in additional technical training, skill development, and sports.

However, you may know that it may be quite tiresome to book any sports facility or equipment. You need to contact the company, wait till they check their database and inform you whether the facility or equipment is available and at what time. So, as a result, you have less flexibility in your training. You cannot choose the preferred time or take a direct look at your other options. Let’s just be honest, such renting experience is not the best. But can anything be done about it? Actually yes, one smart app can be a real game-changer in the facilities rental industry.
Just take a minute and imagine a simple mobile app that would help numerous people to book sports facilities, rent playfields, or various sports equipment. As a software development company, we were approached several times with such ideas and requests and encountered few apps that mimic some of the functionality.
In this article, we’ll share our thoughts about this app idea, acknowledge best practices, and tricky use cases that would enhance the future app.

If you are involved in business related to sports and decided to create your own application for facilities rental, you should consider some essential factors beforehand. So before turning your idea into a real project, make sure you know your target audience and their requirements. 

To create an app is a costly decision, so you need to be sure that you are spending your money right and that your app will be used by your future clients. So our main advice would be to make a prototype, or an MVP before starting the development of a full-scale app. This will help you to test out the idea on a limited audience, pick the right set of functions to solve their problems. MVP costs less than a whole new application but its main advantage is that you can alter it easily and turn into a holistic project. Taking into account all information you receive after testing your idea can help you shape it better. So the first thing you have to do is to select a preferred audience type to target at.

Such clients are usually interested in hosting their corporate events, company birthdays, business holidays, educational camps, summer training, etc. From here you should target event managers, marketing specialists, human resource managers, or head office managers.
If your goal is to attract this type of audience, you should think about the development of a web app or a website. Such apps can contain a minimum set of functions, limited to a clear description of a facility and contact information. You do not need an app with numerous functions or complex interface that can confuse your business clients. They simply do not have time to figure out how it works and where to find all information. It is easier for them to make a call and arrange a rental.

In regards to this audience, we’re talking about small groups of people who are interested in an occasional rental of sports facilities, usually for non-profit reasons (for fun or private event). It could be a company of friends on vacation, a little child camp, a rental for a birthday party, etc.

As you understand this audience can be quite picky because they are looking not only for a place or equipment to spent their leisure time, they would like to create a certain atmosphere around. So they can spend more time looking for the right place and mobile application would be a perfect choice for you and them. You need to think about keeping your clients engaged. So we’d suggest adding such features as:

• pictures of sports facilities or equipment; 
• some entertaining videos shoot on the territory or with the equipment;
• prices with hourly rate and ability to perform instant booking; 
• services of trainers (if needed);
• geolocation so that your clients can choose the most convenient option; 
• feedback and comments section (honest feedback can even attract more clients);
• push notifications to inform your clients about special offers. 

Your sports facilities listing also should include small to medium-sized playgrounds in order to fit the needs of private clients.

This is the least obvious type of clients. But you still should keep in mind this option. Firstly because non-profit organizations are the easiest and most efficient way to get the first clients and get at least some popularity. Think of the non-profit sector as a free advertising tool to gain traction.
Nonprofits are usually rather reserved about new advancements, but they have the widest communication network. They can help you a lot in search of new clients, especially corporate ones, that may be donating to such organizations.

For better User Experience purposes, we would recommend you make a listing of activities and sports names rather than names of the facilities (like hippodrome or bullring). This would allow users to solve their real problem – find the best place to play their favorite sports.
Besides, some types of athletic facilities can serve different sports. Thus, you won’t limit users with only one type of facility and give them more variants to choose from. You can even include an advanced search algorithm, that would pick the right place based on sports type + the number of players.