CourtReserve is rolling out two tightly connected features designed to do one thing: get a new player or non-member onto your courts as fast as possible – and boosting your bottom line. The newly launched “Public Booking” feature gives racquet and paddle clubs a dedicated link that lets anyone reserve a court or register for an event without downloading an app, creating an account, or signing up for a membership. A first of its kind Google integration takes that same flow and embeds it directly into a club’s Google Business Profile, so players who discover a facility through search can book on the spot. The results have been eye opening, to say the least.
“Last month, our 25 beta clubs using public booking processed over $300,000 in revenue,” Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist Ashley Owens said. That figure spans everything from $5 open play sessions to $80 court reservations across tennis and pickleball facilities nationwide.
“The public booking Google integration for facilities and clubs makes it frictionless for the player to sign up instantly from that Google Business profile,” Owens said. A player searching for a club no longer has to hunt down a website, click through a multi-step signup, and create credentials before they can play. “Now I can instantly book a court or sign up for events, programming or lessons, whatever that club or facility wants to allow me to do, as a non-member player instantly from the Google page.”
Building it required rethinking how club software typically works. “We had to completely recreate the reservation flow and the account creation, because most software makes you in and create an account first, and then everything goes through the permissions and restrictions of what that player can do,” Owens explained. “Now it’s almost backwards. We want you in the door.”
That doesn’t mean clubs lose control of the member data or process. Public Booking still captures first and last name, runs two-factor verification by phone or email, collects payment upfront, and can require waivers or DUPR numbers before a player ever arrives. Front desk staff see incoming guests flagged in the system, enabling a more personal welcome.
For clubs in increasingly competitive markets, removing every obstacle between discovery and a confirmed booking is a meaningful edge. “If I can put one more court reservation on my books, what does that look like from a revenue standpoint?” Owens said. “This is a no-brainer.”
A first-time guest can now complete a booking in under 90 seconds. The aim is to convert tourists, drop-ins, and curious locals into paying guests, and let the in-person experience turn them into regulars.
According to CourtReserve VP Ben Virdee-Chapman, the term “Pickleball near me” gets searched over 1 million times per month in the U.S. “Tennis courts near me” adds another 670,000. “That’s nearly 2 million moments every month where someone is actively looking for a place to play. And, most of those searches land on a Google Business Profile before they ever land on a club’s website,” he said.
“If your profile says “call to book” or “visit our website,” you’ve already lost a percentage of those players. They’ll scroll to the next result that lets them tap and reserve,” he said.
CourtReserve says the new features are unlocking powerful new insights. You now know who’s searching, when they want to play, and what they’re willing to pay. And, the clubs using public booking are learning something interesting: non-member players book during off-peak hours that members weren’t using anyway, according to Virdee-Chapman.
“The $850,000 in new revenue I mentioned? That’s largely coming from court time that was previously sitting empty. Tuesday mornings. Wednesday afternoons. The hours that don’t show up in a utilization report because nobody was asking for them,” he said.