March 28, 2012 by pwm42@cornell.edu

Tennis Center Revenue Management

The Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa’s Tennis Center

The Westin Diplomat’s Tennis Center offers 10 clay courts and a pro-shop. 6 of the 10 courts have lights for evening games and one court has stadium seating for up to 1,500 spectators. This tennis center is ranked 24^th in the world among tennis resorts.

Westin Diplomat Tennis Center

Most of the information on the tennis center is in the following link. I also utilized another tennis center in Daytona to compare the two.

http://www.diplomatresort.com/tennis

http://www.floridatenniscenterdaytona.com/

Most tennis centers offer services per person for court rentals, supply rentals, lessons, tournaments, and programs. Time is defined in many ways: daily, hourly, or by day part. Space is defined per court.

Space

The Westin Diplomat tennis center sells their space implicitly in that the tennis center is split into courts, a pro shop, and locker rooms. The courts are divided up into different types of courts: normal courts, evening courts with lights and a court with stadium seating. Also, the pro shop works very well with the tennis courts because customers are able to rent racquets and shoes, tune up their own equipment, or even by other supplies such as water and snacks for the tennis courts. In addition to these two parts of the tennis center, there is an elegant locker room for customers to utilize before and after using the tennis courts.

Additional revenue is earned at the tennis center from private lessons, programs, group outings, tennis camps, clinics, and the pro shop. The tennis center does not only provide the space and equipment to play tennis, but also great services that allow customers to learn how to play tennis or have games supervised by pros who can give helpful tips to customers’ tennis swings. These pros may provide private lessons or clinics. In addition to the smaller-scale services, the tennis center holds tennis camps during the summer months that will use up most of the courts for most of the days. Group outings can be organized so that a business group or a social group can rent out a few courts to play among themselves or hold a tournament among them. Finally, the pro shop has rentals, newest tennis equipment, and a repair shop that will complement customers when they come to play at the courts.

Tennis camp for children and adults

A creative idea I had for the tennis centers was to add indoor courts and maybe have a massage center in the locker rooms. There would be more opportunity to gain revenue from the massage centers after players have a long day out in the sun. Similarly, the indoor courts could also be used to avoid the scorching sun in the middle of the summer.

Time

Tennis centers typically sell time explicitly: either by the day, the hour, or by day part. However, the Westin Diplomat tennis center sells time in both explicit and implicit ways. It sells its unused courts explicitly at a certain rate per day per person; however, it sells its lessons, clinics, camps, and programs by event.

Tennis center sells lessons at the academy

As explained, the tennis center at the Westin Diplomat uses explicit and implicit time for different services. This tennis center can actually shorten the explicitly defined time. Instead of renting the tennis courts out by day, it can be rented by hour which will help the tennis center predict duration better and have more customers in a single day.

Price

Some physical rate fences that are used by tennis centers are the use of ball machines or pro player tips. Also, rate fences may exist between indoor and outdoor tennis courts. Some nonphysical rate fences that are used by the Westin Diplomat tennis center is hotel guest versus non hotel guests. Some other tennis centers have rate fences between children and adults.

Some extra creative fences that can be used by tennis center are season passes or membership. These passes or memberships can allow customers have a discounted price for using the courts, but it may encourage the player to come play at the tennis center more often. Also, if the tennis centers have rate fences between times of day, they will be able to charge higher during peak periods and charge lower at nonpeak periods.