How to Schedule Your Float Center During the Slow Season – DSP 221

For most float centers, the summer months drastically change how busy it gets. It seems that zenning out to nothingness is moderately less appealing when there’s a lot of outdoor activities to enjoy.

Graham and Ashkahn share their thoughts on a reduced schedule. Float On runs 24 hours almost every day throughout the year. so reducing their schedule is typically against their philosophies. They explain some of the reasons people might consider it, what are some good ways to go about it, as well as explain some practices to consider avoiding when cutting hours.

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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Ashkahn: Hey hey, welcome everybody.

Graham: Hello. Another day, another podcast-

Ashkahn: That’s right.

Graham: As we say.

Ashkahn: As one of us says. Thanks for coming, thanks for joining us. We’ve got a question today.

Graham: Yup, and I’m Graham-

Ashkahn: Oh, yeah.

Graham: I will be one of the people answering the question.

Ashkahn: And I’m Ashkahn. That’s right. Yup.

Graham: Today’s question is, “is it a good idea to cut back hours during the slow season?”

Ashkahn: Slow season.

Graham: This is one of those questions where it kind of all depends, and there’s not just a single answer.

Ashkahn: There is a slow season, most typically for float centers in the summer.

Graham: Yeah. And that’s probably, I’m just going to assume that that’s what they mean.

Ashkahn: What they’re talking about, yeah.

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: We’ve seen centers change their hours. We’ve seen a center go as far as just literally closing for like a month and a half, or two months in the middle of the summer.

Graham: Yeah, so people do it. It kind of makes sense. If you’re operating at just a ridiculous capacity, like 30% capacity, then being open for full hours when you’re normally rocking 75 or 80% capacity is a little hard to kind of justify there.

Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s tough. My instinct would not be to shut down for like a month, just because, if for any reason, we do so much work to try to get people to build floating in as part of their routine and their habits. Float once a week, have this membership, make floating a part of your life. To all of a sudden just cut off everyone’s access to it for a chunk of time feels like it really discourages that, or at least kind of breaks the flow for a lot of people. I’m sure it’s hard to recover members and kind of get back into the swing of things from being closed for a period of time like that.

Graham: Yeah. Ideally not shutting down entirely.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: But as far as cutting back hours, the plus side is hopefully you’re saving money in staffing during the time that you’re not open.

Ashkahn: And hopefully those people who would have been floating in those early or late hours are happy to float at a more middle of the day sort of time.

Graham: Yeah. You’re kind of just condensing your schedule, rather than losing-

Ashkahn: Hopefully. I mean, that’s the tricky part, right?

Graham: This is, we’re in Hopeful Land right now.

Ashkahn: Okay, alright. Hopefully that’s what you’re doing.

Graham: You’re cutting back hours, you’re saving money on staffing, and you’re not really losing that much in terms of floaters who would’ve gone with you.

Ashkahn: Mm-hmm.

Graham: I’d say the biggest downside is the staffing. The fact that you’re trying to cut back on staffing hours means your staff doesn’t have as many hours as they used to. That’s hard on people. People kind of schedule their lives around their jobs, lots of times, so just to have a season where they need to pick up other work, or something like that feels difficult.

Ashkahn: Yeah, and I think some people just really like floating at certain times of day.

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: It’s not like getting a haircut, where it’s just like, “Oh, okay, maybe I’ll just scoot my haircut appointment earlier.” I think people choose the time of day they want to float because it affects the experience that they have.

Graham: I do think our regular 2:00 a.m. floaters come in at that time for a specific reason.

Ashkahn: Right.

Graham: And then that would be the time that we would’ve had-

Ashkahn: It’s not because their schedule’s so full they’re like, “Oh, maybe I’ll just float at 2:00 in the morning.”

Graham: Yeah, right. If we were to cut hours, for example, during the summer, 2:00 a.m. would be-

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: The first slot that we’d look at cutting. Even cutting an absurd time most float centers aren’t even open, we’d be alienating some of our floaters.

Ashkahn: Yeah. I guess it’d be an interesting thing to test. You could try running over the course of two years, or maybe one month versus another and seeing what the actual impact on your total number of reservations is.

Graham: Really you should just not have a slow season.

Ashkahn: Yeah, yeah. It’s better to focus on filling your tanks up than it is cutting your schedule, definitely.

Graham: And even to the degree of giving away a lot of free floats, which we preach a lot. But we don’t adjust our schedule during the summertime, which very much is a huge slow season if you’re in the Pacific Northwest.

Ashkahn: I don’t really hear of float centers doing it that much, either. I don’t hear a lot of people saying they have summer hours and non-summer hours.

Graham: Mm-hmm. Yeah. When I do, I guess it’s often even smaller centers. If we’re talking about one or two tanks, I think it’s more similar there, or sometimes I know practices that are one or two tanks, and the person also does massage, and it’s sort of more a one man show, or someone with one or two other workers with them. That’s kind of when I’ll see maybe more of a variable schedule, depending on seasons. Or, in tourist towns, as well.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: I’ll definitely see an adjustment on schedules for just height of tourist season versus not. That’s-

Ashkahn: Yeah. Seasonality with tourist towns is just a whole different beast.

Graham: Yup.

Ashkahn: Seasonality for us is just people having different behaviors in the summer, as opposed to just like, “Oh, yeah, there are a quarter of the people in this place than there are in these during the middle of ski season, in the middle of summer.” Yeah, it’s definitely a different beast.

Graham: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, are there any other downsides besides that? Kind of making it a little harder on staff when they need to fill in hours, if you’re cutting back hours, and making it hard on your customers if they have a specific time that they like to actually get in there and float.

Ashkahn: Yeah, I guess what the other thing I’d say is that when you change your hours, specifically when you add hours, it can take a little bit of time for people to get back in the swing of realizing you’re open those hours.

Graham: Mm-hmm.

Ashkahn: You’re going to have, when you add those hours back, it’s going to be probably slow in those hours for a couple weeks until people realize, “Oh, actually I can float at 9:00 p.m. again, or 9:00 in the morning again.” It’s not one of those things where you just open it up and instantly those are back to normal. I’ve noticed that when we, in the times that we did add hours as we expanded our schedule, it just took a little bit for people to really get in the know again, and realize that those times are available and start booking them. There was kind of a ramp up.

Graham: Yeah, you’re kind of pushing that boulder again from zero momentum.

Ashkahn: Right.

Graham: There’s a little bit of inertia that you have to build up when you change anything. If this is a regular thing you’re doing every year, maybe some of your customers will start to recognize that pattern and get used to it, but let’s face it, you’re a float center. It’s not like you’re school, or something that’s primary in people’s lives, where all of a sudden, summer schedule versus regular school year schedule is this huge transition. You’re at most usually not a giant part of people’s lives.

Ashkahn: Mm-hmm.

Graham: Expecting anyone to really understand exactly when your hours shift is-

Ashkahn: Yeah, like they keep great track of that.

Graham: Ambitious.

Ashkahn: Uh-huh.

Graham: And-

Ashkahn: And-

Graham: What were you going to say?

Ashkahn: Yeah, I guess at the end of the day, mostly people can get floats throughout different times of the day, and that extra money is often enough to pay for the cost of being open for longer. I think it’d be a little hard to really feel like you’re tipping the scales cutting off huge chunks of hours, because you still have rent, you still have so many other kind of fixed costs that come into play.

Graham: I’d tell them, the first thing I’d do before I thought about cutting back hours would be to just go out and find a group that I like and try to give away a lot of free floats and see if I can’t fix my holes in my schedule by being generous with that kind of currency of filling up the tanks without people paying. We see this cascade all of the time of if you give away those free floats and get the tanks full, paying customers come in. That would be step number one, and if that doesn’t work, then I could absolutely see cutting back hours and trying to condense the schedule.

Ashkahn: Yeah. But really try, keep track of the information. If I were to ever do it, I’d really want to look at the numbers and see what ended up happening. If you cut off a third of your schedule, and then you have a third less floats as a result, then you’ve made a mistake, right?

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: Then you’re actually just losing money, as opposed to if people really did change their behavior and shift down to the available times of the day.

Graham: Yeah. Don’t just guess and shoot in the dark and call it good. Track everything, have an experiment minded philosophy when it comes to doing anything like this with a business, even if it’s just for a season.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Good luck out there. Obviously, if you’re thinking about cutting back hours, it means your capacity isn’t what you want in the slow season. Yeah, good luck with whatever route you decide to take.

Ashkahn: Cool, alright. Well, if you guys have more questions, you can go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.

Graham: And it’ll be great.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: We love getting them-

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: We’re excited every time one comes in.

Ashkahn: Super. When a bell goes off in our office here.

Graham: Is that-

Ashkahn: That’s what that noise has been.

Graham: I thought that was in my head. Alright, bye everyone.

Ashkahn: Bye.

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