A special request: please book early!

Yogawest has an important favour to ask of you… we need your help to be able to run our classes smoothly and to secure the future of our quieter classes. We explain below why our booking system is set up the way it currently is and in particular why we need you to book your class early.

Firstly, we want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you that are attending in-house classes at Yogawest this year: we know there is a lot of choice out there and we are relying on our regulars (old and new) to keep our in-house classes running during these challenging times.

How Yogawest classes used to run

In pre-pandemic times we ran most classes on our timetable as drop-ins. Because we have such a wonderfully large building, we could offer drop-in classes and the numbers largely looked after themselves. If classes ran with low numbers, we subsidised them with higher-number classes and never needed to cancel classes.

Why is it different now?

Sadly our student numbers have dropped dramatically since we first went into lockdown in March 2020. We know that some students are preferring to stay online, some are not yet ready to return to live classes and some are no longer in Bristol. We are working hard to attract new and returning students to classes, and are pleased to say that most class numbers are currently on the rise.

Alongside the realities of fewer students coming through our doors, Yogawest is subject to dramatically higher overheads than pre-pandemic, including significant extra cleaning and preparation time before and after every class.

For these reasons it is not currently possible to sustain classes with low numbers.

How classes are running now

Because of the increased costs of running in-house classes, we need to be sure of getting a minimum number of bookings in order to cover at least baseline costs. Although the more popular Yogawest classes often subsidise newer classes as they start up and while they are growing, we don’t currently have the weekly numbers to sustain low-number classes.

Therefore, our current system is that we ask you to book your place as early as possible for your class, but at the latest by 6pm the evening before (assuming places are still available). At this point we take a view on whether the class has enough people to confirm it can run, and if it doesn’t have enough people, we may need to cancel it.

We really don’t like cancelling classes: it is soul-destroying for the teacher to have the class cancelled the night before. And if we do cancel, we totally appreciate that we are letting the ones who have booked down (not the ones who haven’t), alongside the teacher. (Which is why we support classes to run if possible).

Since re-opening in-house, we have been allowing same-day bookings for classes, in reality this has not been working as more and more people have booked last minute: this makes things really hard for our admin, but most of all it is really hard for the class teacher.

We don’t want to completely stop the same-day booking option, but unless we can persuade the majority of attendees to book in advance, we may have to. So, for now, our first strategy is to ask for your help!

How you can help your teacher

There is no doubt about it: during pandemic times, teaching classes is much more challenging. Your teacher needs to plan their class much more carefully, putting thought and care into the needs of every person that has booked the class. At the moment, we can’t interact with last-minute drop-in students in the way we used to, and it can be quite stressful if the teacher has to re-adjust their class plan on the day according to who turns up.

Of course we understand that it’s not always possible to plan at the moment, so for this reason we allow you to cancel your place before the ‘no-cancel’ period (usually 24 hours).

And, as described above, we have allowed same-day drop-ins in order for occasional extras to attend class: not for regulars to use every week!

For all the reasons above, we respectfully request that you book your place early for your usual class at Yogawest. If not for the sake of Yogawest’s planning, then, much more importantly, for the sake of our valued Yogawest teachers and for your fellow classmates who have booked early.

Thank you!