A booking app for your padel club: your own or a platform

What should a padel booking app do?

• Book a court by day, time and court type, seeing free slots instantly.
• Take payment for the booking and let each player pay their share.
• Find a match with players at your level.
• Get into the club with a QR code, no keys or front desk.
• Notifications for changes, open spots, tournaments and lessons.
• A dashboard for the club: occupancy, payments, members and prices.

A booking platform or your own app?

Padel booking platforms such as Playtomic offer a complete system with no development and put you in front of players who don't know you yet. In exchange they usually charge fees, and the player is first and foremost a user of the platform.

Your own app carries your brand, keeps your members' data in your system and lets you set prices, passes and rules without depending on anyone. The upfront investment is higher and you have to build the visibility yourself.

Does it have to be in the App Store and Google Play?

Not necessarily. A progressive web app (PWA) installs from the browser onto the home screen, works like an app and updates without going through the stores. For a club it is usually enough, and if you need to be in the stores later, it can be published there too.

How do split payments work?

A common approach: whoever books pays their share and the app sends the other three players a link to pay theirs, while the club can always see who has paid. With Stripe or your bank's virtual POS (Redsys) you can take cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and with Redsys also Bizum.

An example: Lebeche

Lebeche is a concept project: the app for an eight-court padel club in Murcia, with bookings, matches by level, split payments and QR access. You can try it on your phone from the case study.