How to run a waitlist for group classes

A full class is good news until someone cancels at 9 pm and the spot stays empty. A waitlist turns those cancellations back into bookings, as long as you make a few decisions up front: who gets a freed spot, whether they have to confirm it, and when it’s too late to hand it out.

1. Decide who gets the spot

The simplest rule is also the one people accept most easily: first come, first served. Whoever joined the waitlist first gets the next free spot. It’s easy to explain and nobody can say you played favourites.

Other rules exist, such as members before drop-ins, or regulars before newcomers, but each one needs explaining and usually a spreadsheet. Unless you have a good reason, stick to the order people joined.

2. Book people straight away, or ask them first?

There are two ways to hand out a freed spot:

• Book automatically. The next person is booked and told so. The spot is filled within seconds, and if they can’t make it, they cancel and it moves on.
• Offer and wait. The next person is asked whether they still want it, and gets a time limit to answer. It respects people’s plans, but each “no” or missed message costs time, and a spot freed the evening before can easily stay empty.

For classes that run every week, booking automatically works best. People joined the waitlist because they wanted to come, and cancelling takes one tap if their plans changed.

3. Stop promoting shortly before class

Booking someone into a class that starts in 20 minutes rarely works: they won’t see the message in time, or they can’t get there. Set a cut-off, for example two hours before the start, after which freed spots are no longer handed out automatically.

Inside the cut-off you can still fill a spot yourself, for example with someone who’s already at the studio. You make that call, and nobody gets an automatic text too late to use it.

4. Tell people what happened

A waitlist only works if people trust it. Send a message at each step:

• when someone joins, with their place in line,
• when they’re booked from the waitlist, with the class and time,
• when you remove them, so they don’t keep waiting for nothing.

Text messages work better than email here, since a freed spot can be hours away and people read texts within minutes.

5. Make cancelling easy

The easier it is to cancel, the better your waitlist works. If cancelling means writing you a message, people who can’t come simply don’t turn up, and their spot is wasted. A cancel button in the booking confirmation frees the spot while there’s still time to pass it on.

Pair it with a cancellation window, so that a late cancellation still costs a class from a pass. That keeps people from booking “just in case”, which is what fills your waitlist with people who could have had a spot.

6. Watch for patterns

If the same class has a waitlist every week, that’s a signal: add a second session, move to a bigger room or raise the capacity. When you add spots, the people already waiting should be the first to get them.

How Groopla handles this

In Groopla a full class shows “Join waitlist” instead of “Book”. When someone cancels, the next person in line is booked automatically and gets a text or email saying so. You set the cut-off in hours before the start (two by default), can promote or remove people by hand, and raising the capacity books people from the waitlist too. More about automatic waitlists.