Surf Camp Booking Software

Why surf camps outgrow lesson-only booking tools

Most surf school booking systems were designed around a single slot: one customer, one lesson, one time. Camps break that model in three places.

• The stay is the product. Guests choose dates, a room type and a number of people first, and only then think about lessons. A tool that starts from the lesson calendar makes them work backwards.
• The money arrives in two parts. Camps are sold weeks or months ahead, so a deposit at booking and a balance closer to arrival is normal. Lesson tools tend to assume full payment up front.
• Rooms can be sold twice. If the same beds are also listed on Airbnb or Booking.com, the camp calendar has to know about those nights or you end up apologising to someone at the door.

The usual workaround is a booking engine for the rooms, a separate lesson system and a spreadsheet joining the two. SurfSlot replaces that with one camp booking page connected to your lesson calendar. If you are still running camps out of WhatsApp and a shared sheet, our post on outgrowing WhatsApp and spreadsheets covers the warning signs.

Rooms and beds, priced the way you actually sell them

You set up each room type once: a name, description, a photo gallery, capacity, how many of that room you have, and its amenities (sea view, ensuite, bunk beds, board storage and so on). Facilities the whole property shares, such as a pool, shared kitchen, yoga shala or co-working space, are set once at camp level so you don't repeat them on every room.

Pricing follows how camps really work:

• Whole rooms or beds in shared rooms, so a dorm can be sold bed by bed while a double is sold as a room.
• Per-room or per-person rates, with an optional single supplement when one guest takes a room priced for two.
• Seasonal rates per room, using the same seasons as your seasonal pricing for lessons.
• Minimum nights, plus blocked dates for maintenance, owner stays or nights sold elsewhere.
• Check-in and check-out times and turnover rules, either hours between guests on the same day or full days blocked after check-out for cleaning.

Camp packages: weeks, departures and the lessons inside them

Packages are what most guests actually buy: "7 nights, 5 surf lessons", or a fixed-date coaching week. Each package can be priced in one of two ways:

1. One fixed price for the package, per person or per room, which suits all-inclusive weeks.
2. Worked out from the room rate plus activities, so the price follows the room the guest picks and the number of lessons included.

You also decide how the dates work. Allow any arrival date, restrict arrivals to set weekdays (Saturday-to-Saturday is common), or sell set departures only with a fixed number of spots per departure, which is how retreats and coaching weeks usually run. Packages can be open for booking within a date window, and longer-stay discounts reward guests who book more nights (for example 10% off seven nights or more).

For the lessons inside a package you choose the lesson product and how many are included, and when they run: on consecutive days from arrival, on days the guest picks, or on days you set yourself.

Included lessons land in your real lesson calendar

This is the part a separate room booking engine cannot do. When a camp stay is paid, the lessons included in the package are created as real sessions in SurfSlot, with the guests added as participants. From there they behave exactly like any other lesson:

• They are matched to instructors by level, activity and working days, just like your day bookings (instructor management).
• They sit against your beaches and their condition rules, so a bad forecast flags the camp group too (surf condition alerts).
• Every participant gets their own waiver link (digital waivers).

Camp guests and drop-in customers can share a group lesson, so you fill seats rather than running two half-empty sessions on the same beach.

Deposits, balances and your cancellation policy

Set a default deposit percentage for the camp and override it per package. The balance can be paid online before arrival (you set how many days before arrival it is due), paid on arrival, or you can take full payment at booking. The balance due date is calculated for each stay and shown to the guest at checkout, so nobody is surprised.

Your cancellation policy and house rules are written in your own words and shown with the booking. For help choosing a deposit level, see our guide to surf school deposit and no-show policies, and for how to package and price camp weeks, read surf camp pricing.

Payments go through Stripe Connect into your own Stripe account. A SurfSlot booking fee is added at checkout on the amount being paid. There is no subscription, no setup fee and no lock-in, so a camp that closes for winter pays nothing in the months it has no bookings. See pricing for how the fee works.

Extras that sell themselves at checkout

Airport transfers, board hire, meals, massage, yoga classes or a surf photography session can be offered as extras during checkout, each with a photo and a price per stay, per night, per person or per person per night. SurfSlot works out the line total from the guest's nights and group size, so a per-person-per-night breakfast on a four-person, seven-night stay is priced correctly without you doing the maths.

Stop selling the same room twice

Camps rarely sell every bed through one channel. SurfSlot handles the overlap in both directions:

• Calendar links out. Copy a private calendar link for all rooms or for each room and paste it into Airbnb, Booking.com, Google Calendar or your property system, so they see which nights are taken in SurfSlot.
• Calendar links in. Paste the calendar link from Airbnb, Booking.com or another site and those nights are blocked in SurfSlot. Imports refresh automatically every hour.
• Cloudbeds. If your rooms already live in Cloudbeds, connect it with your API key and property ID instead of managing rooms twice.
• Other systems. A generic connection reads a JSON list of bookings from another system, and an availability API lets a partner system read yours.

More on connecting outside channels on the booking integrations page.

The front desk view

Each morning the arrivals and departures view shows who is arriving, who is in house and who is leaving, with check-in and check-out statuses you can update as guests come and go. Export the day sheet as a CSV for the cleaning team or the airport driver. Phone and walk-in guests can be added as manual stays, and SurfSlot refuses a room that is already taken for those dates. An occupancy calendar shows how many rooms are full on each night.

Guests book on your own camp booking page, which you can embed on your website or open from a pop-up button, so the booking stays on your brand.