As a busy yoga enthu­si­ast, I some­times won­der what would hap­pen if yoga stu­dios within a given metro area agreed to an “Open Table” model for class book­ings. (Open Table is a cen­tral­ized reser­va­tion ser­vice for restau­rants that oper­ates in major cities, includ­ing iPhone and other smart­phone apps.)

In an ideal world I’d take 6–8 weekly classes in suc­ces­sion from the same teacher at the same stu­dio, to ben­e­fit from her care­ful class plan­ning and sequenc­ing. But in 2 years of tak­ing classes I’ve never been able to attend all 8 classes due to fam­ily or work-related sched­ule con­flicts. As a result I’ve joined a sec­ond local stu­dio to have an alter­nate place where I can take classes when I face a con­flict with my pri­mary stu­dio. Each one uses Mind­Body for book­ing pur­poses, so I have two sep­a­rate accounts now.

From a busy student’s per­spec­tive, it would be really great if I could book classes using a cen­tral­ized reser­va­tion sys­tem that showed me all the classes avail­able today (or at later dates) within, say, a 20-mile radius. For each class on offer I’d want to see infor­ma­tion about the yoga style or tra­di­tion, the teacher, the rel­a­tive dif­fi­culty of the class, pre­req­ui­sites (if any), time, loca­tion, pric­ing, etc. Like the Open Table restau­rant model it would be nice to see some­thing com­pa­ra­ble to menus and pho­tographs of the venue, if it’s a stu­dio I’m unfa­mil­iar with. I’d also want to be able to fil­ter the class list­ings by teacher name, yoga tra­di­tion (such as Anusara), dif­fi­culty level, etc.

This raises a larger ques­tion of the busi­ness model. Would I pay the cen­tral book­ing ser­vice, and have it dis­burse funds to the stu­dio? (My per­sonal pref­er­ence as a stu­dent.) Would there be a finder’s fee paid by the book­ing ser­vice to the stu­dio, with stu­dents pay­ing for the class directly to the stu­dio? I don’t know. Cer­tainly from the student’s per­spec­tive, being able to book and pay online in a sin­gle trans­ac­tion is the most con­ve­nient approach.

What I do know is, I’d take more classes if such a book­ing sys­tem were avail­able, one that allowed me to book and take classes on the spur of the moment, as time per­mits. Such an approach could be finan­cially ben­e­fi­cial to the stu­dio own­ers, if they could fill up more classes… They might even offer spe­cials on classes that are gen­er­ally sparsely attended.

Per­haps this is some­thing that Mind­body could explore.