Neon Beach

Only thing with doctors appts. is that mean very little cause you have to wait an hour anyway. I take appts. and walk-ins. People who make appts. have a garunteed time and they know, at least in my salon, that will never have to wait more than a few minutes for a tan. Walk-ins are in a lottery and may have to wait 20 minutes or more? I wouldn't do that to my clients.

t.i.t.s.

We only take app. on high pressure beds because we have only 2 h.p. units. The rest of the salon is walk-in

BooBop

Quote:Walk-ins are in a lottery and may have to wait 20 minutes or more? I wouldn't do that to my clients.


Neon, I felt the same way a few years back. But I took the plunge and found out that I could satisfy more clients without appts. I would turn away more clients at certain times of the day and you know what that means;;; they find another salon that can take them in.

With 11 tanning units the longest wait I have seen in my salon is 8-10 mins. Some will opt to an upgrade or the booth if they don't want to wait. With appts. I would have clients get peeed cause we would be running behind when ONE person would be late getting in or extra slow starting their session. Another problem would be that someone would specifically book a certain bed (even tho all the base units are the same) they wanted bed 1 or 2. They didn't like to be shuffled around because someone was already in that bed and we were running behind.

slowhand

No appointments is the way to go but what the breaking point is in number of beds is an ineividual decision. I started no appointments with just 10 beds. I have more now but I've never looked back. I just make sure I have more than one unit per level.

It's rarely mentioned how package type influences appointments vs walk-in. Sell a visit package just for that single big bed and you'll have one ticked off customer when he or she comes in and there's two waiting. Sell point packages and that customer can go in ANY bed with no out-of-pocket. I find this works best. Even my EFTs are based on the point idea (so many points given each month).

tanu01

10 Units is when we decide walk ins only. I think with less than that I would take app. and allow walk-ins on a have to wait basis

Neon Beach

Sounds good. No appts. require enough equipment to allow you to have something available with little or no waiting, at all times.

engfant

Call aheads. Appointments if they want but VERY STRICT. No one ever has a problem. Most of my appointments get messed up. This is tanning not a lung transplant. Last year I was doing upto 95 people by myself with 1-5 appointments MAX. The efficiency was UNCANNY and had MAYBE 45min TOTAL wait time.

EVERY FRIKKIN YEAR I got these LOW LIVES that are BIG MOUTHING about how the PLACE OVER HERE has a 3 day wait and THIS PLACE OVER THERE got a line for 6 miles and then they are OUT OF BUSINESS 5 months later.

DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE.

RIP ODB

tweedygirl

we do walk ins only. it goes along very well. we have 4 20 minute beds, 1 15 minute, and 1 10 min. standup. the waits are not long at all. we have a great relationship with 95% of our clients anyway so we talk the whole time and the time seems to fly by. we've only had 2 people that have been here a year get fed up with waiting 5-10 minutes.

KnxTan

Appointments on strict 30 minute schedule. No bed at the time you want? The upgrade beds are available. Couldn't imagine just walk-ins during busy seasons.

Neon Beach

I agree. During peak season you can pinpoint the times that are most desirable, and my clients know it, and book ahead of time to assure a spot. Now if I had 2 or 3 more pcs. of equipment walk-ins only would be feasible, but not good as it stands now. I look at it this way, when I wanna haircut, I wanna haircut when I want it, so I book it rather than wandering in and waiting forever to fall into a gap.