Six in the morning, and the arena is frozen
You walk down to the arena in the dark and the surface is hard. Lessons start at nine. You decide to cancel the morning. Now you need to contact twenty riders, some of them parents of children, before they set off. Some have mobile numbers in the lesson book, some only have email, one only uses Facebook.
By half eight you have reached most of them. Two families turn up anyway. Over the next week, rebooking the cancelled lessons takes hours, because every rider needs a slot with a suitable horse and instructor, and some want refunds rather than new lessons.
Why weather days become admin days
Weather cancellations are unavoidable for many riding schools, especially those without an indoor school. What turns them into a problem is the manual work that follows.
- Contact details are spread across the lesson book, phones and messaging apps.
- Each rider is called or messaged one at a time.
- Rebooking requires checking instructor, horse and level availability for each rider.
- Credits and refunds are tracked in a notebook or not at all.
- Riders who do not get the message arrive anyway.
Lost lessons, lost goodwill
Every cancelled lesson that is not rebooked is income the school does not get back. A day of cancellations followed by a slow rebooking process means lessons lost for good, especially from occasional riders.
Riders who arrive to find their lesson cancelled are rightly annoyed. Parents who drove a child across the county are more annoyed. And the staff time spent on the phone on weather days comes from people who also need to look after the horses.
Cancel, notify and rebook in one step
We build a cancellation and rebooking tool into your lesson system.
- When you decide to cancel, you select the lessons affected, for example everything outdoors this morning, and a reason.
- Every affected rider or parent is notified at once by text and email, using the contact details on their booking.
- The message includes a link to rebook. They see only slots that suit them: right lesson type, level and a suitable horse and instructor available.
- Riders who prefer can choose a credit or a refund, according to your cancellation policy.
- Anyone who has not opened the message by a time you choose is flagged, so staff can phone them.
- Credits are recorded against the rider and used automatically at their next booking.
| Step | Weather day now | With the tool |
|---|---|---|
| Deciding to cancel | You | You |
| Contacting riders | One by one, by phone | All at once, by text and email |
| Who has not seen it | Unknown | Flagged for a phone call |
| Rebooking | Over the following week | Riders choose a suitable slot |
| Credits and refunds | Notebook | Recorded against each rider |
Whether to cancel, and your policy on credits and refunds, are your decisions. The tool carries them out quickly.
A weather day that takes minutes
You check the arena at six, decide to cancel the morning, and select those lessons on your phone. Within a minute every rider has a message. Most rebook themselves before breakfast. Staff ring the two who have not opened the message. By nine, you are dealing with the horses, not the phone.
Credits are tracked properly, so there are no disputes months later about whether a lesson was owed.
Over a season, you also get a record of how many lessons were lost to weather and when. That is useful when deciding whether to invest in arena drainage or a covered school, because the decision can be based on dates rather than a general sense that winter was bad.
Do weather days take over your week?
- You phone riders one by one to cancel.
- Some riders turn up because they did not get the message.
- Rebooking cancelled lessons takes days.
- Credits are tracked on paper or not at all.
- Staff lose hours on the phone when the weather turns.