Planning a Trampoline Park Before Buying Equipment

Start with the visits you want to sell

Before comparing equipment, write down the types of visit customers will actually be able to buy. These might include general sessions, age-specific activities, parties, organised groups or other offers appropriate to your venue. Treat each as a separate product until you have proved that the same operating process works for all of them.

For each visit type, write a short customer-facing description. State what the booking covers, how long the booked activity lasts, when guests should arrive, which parts of the venue are included and what happens after the activity. If you cannot explain the offer clearly in a few sentences, it probably needs more planning before it goes on sale.

Use a real booking question to test each product

Imagine a parent asks, “I want to bring two children on Saturday afternoon. What exactly do I book?” Your team should be able to give a straightforward answer without translating internal package names or explaining several hidden conditions.

Do the same for a party organiser. They will want to know more than the activity start time: when the group should arrive, what the package includes, how the party space fits around the activity and what information they need to give their guests. Planning those answers now exposes gaps before they become reception problems.

Map one visit from booking to departure

Take your most common planned visit and draw it as a sequence. Start when the customer chooses a session and finish when they leave the premises. Include the steps between those points rather than jumping straight from “booking” to “activity”.

Put approximate operating times beside each stage once you have tested them in the proposed environment. This is not about making every visit rigid. It is about discovering whether your timetable depends on several things happening simultaneously in the same space.

Separate arrival time from activity time

One of the most important decisions when planning a trampoline park is the difference between when guests arrive and when their booked activity begins. Work backwards from the activity start and identify what genuinely has to happen beforehand under your established procedures.

Then test that arrival process rather than guessing how long it takes. Walk a first-time visitor through reception and the required preparation steps. Repeat with a family and with a larger group. Use what you learn to decide how early customers should be asked to arrive.

Make both times visible in booking information. If the activity starts at 11:00 but customers are expected at 10:40, show “arrive by 10:40” and “activity starts at 11:00” as separate instructions. Customers should not have to discover at reception that “11:00 session” meant they were expected substantially earlier.

Protect the activity time customers believe they bought

If you sell a stated duration of activity, be clear about what that duration means. Do not quietly use part of the advertised activity period for an arrival process that was never explained. If preparation occurs before the activity, build it into the arrival instructions and operating timetable.

Plan capacity across shared spaces, not just the activity area

A timetable can fit perfectly on paper and still produce a crowded venue. The activity area is only one part of the customer journey. Reception, waiting areas, belongings storage, preparation areas, party rooms, café seating where applicable and departure routes can all affect how many bookings work comfortably at the same time.

Create a simple timeline for each visit type showing which spaces it uses. Then place several bookings on the same timeline. Look for moments when different groups need the same place simultaneously.

Hypothetical example: a party activity runs from 2:00 to 3:00 and uses a party room afterwards. A second party begins its activity at 3:00. The activity schedule may appear to fit neatly, but both groups could need reception or preparation space around the handover, while the first group still occupies another part of the venue. Mapping the whole visit reveals the overlap.

Do the same exercise around your busiest planned period. It is easier to adjust a proposed timetable or layout on paper than after customers are already booking it.

Design reception around real customer situations

Reception has to cope with more than a perfectly prepared customer arriving alone. Test the desk and surrounding space using situations that are likely to occur in normal operation.

Walk through at least these three arrivals

1. A first-time family: they need to find the venue, identify the correct desk, give staff enough information to locate their booking and understand where to go next.
2. A returning visitor: staff should be able to identify the correct booking without unnecessarily repeating steps that are not required for that visit.
3. A party arriving in stages: the organiser arrives first, several guests follow and one family arrives later. Decide how reception identifies the group and what happens to late arrivals under your published rules.

For each scenario, write down what the receptionist needs to know and where that information comes from. Also decide where a customer waits if they need additional help. One complicated booking should not force every customer who is ready to proceed to stand behind it indefinitely.

Think about the physical counter too. Where will a family stand while speaking to staff? Where does the next customer queue? Where do people move after check-in? A reception desk that looks attractive in an empty building may behave very differently when several families arrive with coats, bags and excited children.

Set the operating requirements before booking limits

Customer journey planning sits alongside the wider professional work needed for the premises and activity. Appropriate qualified advice should establish matters such as equipment suitability, venue requirements, operating procedures, supervision arrangements and relevant capacity limits. Use those established requirements as inputs to your booking plan rather than choosing a convenient ticket number first.

Once those arrangements are established, translate them into practical operating rules. Staff need to know which session a customer belongs to, whether the booking is complete from an administrative point of view and whether any required step remains outstanding before the customer proceeds.

Keep those concepts separate. A customer having paid does not necessarily mean every other requirement associated with the visit has been completed. Likewise, an online form or other administrative record should not be treated as a substitute for any separate checks required by the venue’s properly established procedures.

Write down the operational consequence

For every requirement established through the appropriate planning process, ask what reception or booking staff actually need to do. If a limit applies to a particular session, where will staff see that limit when taking bookings? If a customer has an outstanding administrative step, how will reception identify it? Turning requirements into clear staff actions makes them usable during a busy shift.

Test parties and group bookings separately

Do not assume a party is simply a larger version of an ordinary booking. It may use several parts of the venue and involve one organiser making decisions for many guests.

Create a hypothetical party of ten and walk through the entire visit. Start with the organiser making the booking. Note what they need to know immediately, what information should be sent to guests, when the group should arrive, where early arrivals wait, what happens if someone is late and when the party moves between spaces.

Then test the venue timetable with two parties close together. Check the activity area, reception, preparation space and party room separately. If the second party needs a room before the first has realistically left it, the packages clash even if their activity sessions do not.

Make changes and moved bookings part of the test

Plans change. Decide how staff should handle a customer asking to move a booking to another eligible date or session under your terms. The important operational questions are whether the new session has suitable availability, what happens to any spaces released from the original booking and what updated information the customer receives.

Use the same approach for a full session. Staff should know what alternatives they can offer rather than attempting to squeeze additional visitors into a booking limit that was established for a reason.

Choose software and equipment against the plan

Once you can describe the customer journey, turn it into a requirements list for suppliers. Instead of asking whether a system is “good for trampoline parks”, ask a supplier to show how it would handle the situations your business expects.

Bring specific examples to a demonstration: a family booking a normal session, a party using more than one part of the venue, a booking moved to another eligible session, a customer arriving with an outstanding administrative step and a session that has reached its established booking limit.

For each demonstration, note what information the system records, what staff can see at reception and which parts of the process still depend on a manual action. Do not assume that two systems exchange information unless the supplier confirms how the relevant setup works.

Review the whole operating cost

When comparing options, list the hardware, software, installation or configuration work, staff training, ongoing support and any other costs relevant to the proposed setup. Ask suppliers to explain their current pricing and terms rather than relying on assumptions from another venue or an old quotation.

Apply the same discipline to physical equipment. Buy against an agreed layout and operating plan, with appropriate professional input where required, rather than designing the customer journey around purchases that have already been made.