Since Viking is built ‘by surfers for surfers’, we understand the ins and outs of working at the beach. And, depending on where you’re located in the world, one of these is dealing with tide movements. We have developed functionality for tide-dependant scheduling in cooperation with surf schools in the UK, where the tide can be so dominant that there only is a 3-hour window for lessons, sometimes twice a day, but always on different times.
Compare this to the regularity of most kitesurfing lessons, that can simply be scheduled on recurring times every day (often 10am, 2pm and 18pm). Of course there still needs to be wind for the lessons to continue, but in terms of scheduling this is a ‘luxury’ when you compare it to the tide-dependant locations!
Most surfschool booking systems only allow for simple recurring lessons. And even if is possible to use highly irregular starting times every day, it’s often a lot of hassle to set this up.
In Viking, you can choose to use the ‘tide scheduler’ for any product. This adds another layer of availability. In a very simple (but perfectly effective) monthly calendar with all your defined starting times, you can now simply check for every day, at which times the lessons will appear in the booking form and can be scheduled by customers.
Most schools using this functionality, simply input the times once a season, or once every couple of months, with the tide table on one side and Viking on the other!
This feature can be valuable in other situations. Some real-life examples are SUP schools who want to offer SUP rentals relatively last minute on times that it suits them. With the availability schedule it’s easy to just open up a few timeslots.
