A five-day bootcamp is a month of admin squeezed into one week.

Your weekly classes spread the work out. Payments arrive across the month. Questions trickle in. A new student joins every few weeks, and you settle them in one at a time.

A holiday programme does all of that at once. Fifteen families sign up in the same fortnight. Fifteen payments to match. Fifteen sets of questions about pickup, lunch and allergies, most of them arriving the night before day one. And then, five days later, the whole group disappears.

That compression is why so many coaches run one camp, find it exhausting, and never run another. It's rarely the coaching that puts them off. It's everything around it.

This is the playbook for doing it properly: how to price it, how many spots to offer, how to take payment, what to ask before day one, and the part most coaches miss, which is what happens after the last day. It works the same whether you call it a camp, a clinic, an intensive, a workshop series or a bootcamp.

A programme is a different business from your weekly classes

Weekly classes are a subscription. A programme is a one-off event, and events have different maths.

The big difference is fixed cost. You book the venue for the whole week whether four children turn up or fifteen. Same for an assistant coach, equipment hire, or a court you pay for by the block. Those costs land before a single family has paid.

So the question that decides whether a programme is worth running isn't "what should I charge?" It's "how many spots do I need to fill before I'm not losing money?"

The break-even number

Work out what a completely full programme would bring in. Then work out what your fixed costs are as a share of that. That share is also the share of spots you need to fill to break even.

If a full programme would bring in five times your venue and assistant costs, you're at the top of the table: three families and you're covering costs. If the venue alone eats half a full house, you need eight before you earn anything, and a quiet week turns into a loss.

If you buy materials per child (art supplies, a T-shirt, lunch), take those off the price first, then do the same sum. The principle holds.

Set a minimum, and a date to decide

The table gives you a number every programme should have: the minimum to run. Below it, you cancel and refund everyone.

Pick a go/no-go date, usually one to two weeks before day one, and say it in your listing: "This programme runs with a minimum of six participants. We'll confirm by [date]."

It feels risky to admit a programme might not run. In practice it does the opposite. Families understand it, it creates gentle urgency to book, and it saves you from running a week at a loss because you were too embarrassed to cancel.

One caution: if you cancel, cancel early and refund in full, without fuss. A coach who cancels a camp four days out, after parents have arranged their week around it, loses those families for good.

Decision one: the whole programme, or pick your days?

This is the choice that shapes everything else, and both answers are right for different programmes.

Whole programme only suits anything that builds day to day. A five-day tennis bootcamp where Friday is a mini-tournament. A dance intensive that ends in a showcase. A coding camp where the project gets finished on the last day. A child who only comes Tuesday and Thursday misses the arc, and holds the group back on the days they're there.

It's also simpler. One price, one payment, one roster all week, and revenue you know on the go/no-go date.

Pick your days suits programmes where each day stands on its own. An art workshop with a different project every day. Drop-in swim clinics. Separate one-day workshops in the same week. More families can fit you around their plans, which matters more than coaches expect: holiday weeks are full of trips, grandparents and other camps. Coerver's Sydney camps, for example, sell the same four-day week as a two, three or four-day option.

The cost is that capacity becomes a daily question. Monday sells out, Friday sits half empty, and you're paying for the venue on both.

A middle path that works well: sell the whole programme as the main option, priced a little below the sum of the single days, and open single days only for spots left close to the start. Families who want the full experience commit early. The spots that would have stayed empty still earn something.

Decision two: how many spots

Set the cap from your hardest day, not your easiest.

The right number is the most participants you can coach well, safely, on the day with the most going on: the match day, the showcase rehearsal, the day you're short an assistant. If you can manage twelve on that day, the cap is twelve, even though the other four days could take sixteen.

For programmes with children, check any ratio rules that apply where you work, and any your venue imposes. These vary a lot by country, activity and age group, so look them up rather than assume.

Two things a firm cap does for you. It protects the quality of the week, which is what gets families back next holiday. And a visible "3 spots left" is honest urgency: you aren't inventing scarcity, you're telling people the truth.

Decision three: take payment upfront, in full

For weekly classes, billing monthly or by package is normal. For a programme, take payment at the moment of booking, in full.

The reasons are practical:

• A spot is only held when it's paid for. "Please save a spot for Jun Hao, will pay later" is how a programme ends up full on paper and two-thirds full on day one.

• There's nothing to chase. Chasing fifteen payments in the week before camp, while also preparing camp, is exactly the admin that burns coaches out.

• Commitment changes attendance. A family that has paid in full turns up. A family that meant to pay finds something else to do.

The exception is a long or expensive programme, say a multi-week intensive. There, a deposit at booking and the balance by a fixed date before the start is fairer, and it's still structured. What you want to avoid is the open-ended version: "pay when you can."

The reasoning in our cancellation and deposit policy guide applies here too, with one change: for a programme, the deposit isn't optional insurance against a no-show. Payment is the booking.

A refund policy you can copy

Write this before you open bookings, and put it on the booking page. Adapt the windows. Keep the shape.

Refunds and changes

More than 14 days before the start: full refund, or move to a future programme.

7 to 14 days before: credit towards a future programme, or a refund if we can fill your spot.

Less than 7 days before, or missed days during the programme: no refund. The spot has been held and the week planned around it.

If we cancel (for example, because we don't reach the minimum number): full refund, always.

If something serious happens, such as illness or a family emergency, talk to us. We'd always rather sort it out than hold rigidly to a rule.

Why longer windows than weekly classes? Because a programme spot can't be refilled the way a single lesson can. Once the week has started, nobody new joins on Wednesday.

And the last line is the most important one, for the same reason as in any good policy. A firm default is what makes a deliberate exception mean something. A child who comes down with a fever on day two, from a family who booked the first week you opened, is exactly who a coach should bend the rule for. That's a judgement only you can make. The policy just stops you making it from scratch for every request.

Ask everything at booking, not the night before

The single biggest source of camp-week messages is information you didn't collect when the family booked. So collect it then, in one go, on the booking form.

For most programmes that means five things:

1. Emergency contact. A name and number other than the person booking.

2. Medical needs and allergies. Only what you need to keep the participant safe during your programme.

3. Pickup. Who is allowed to collect a child, and whether older children may leave on their own.

4. Photo consent. A simple yes or no, if you post on social media.

5. Level or experience. Enough to group participants sensibly on day one.

Resist the urge to add more. Every extra question costs you bookings at the moment someone is deciding. If you won't act on an answer, don't ask the question.

And treat what you collect with care. Health details and pickup arrangements are sensitive. Keep them where only you and your coaches can see them, use them for this programme, and delete what you no longer need afterwards.

The week before, and the week itself

Once bookings close, the work shifts from selling to communicating. The aim is fewer, better messages.

One message to everyone, a few days before. Start time, location with a map link, what to bring, what to wear, pickup arrangements, and how to reach you on the day. Send it once, to each family individually, not in a group chat where one question becomes twenty replies.

Take attendance every day. For weekly classes, attendance is about billing. For a programme with children, it's about knowing who is in your care. Mark it at the start, and check pickups against it at the end.

A short note at the end of each day is optional, and powerful. Two lines and a photo (with consent) answers the question every parent asks at dinner: "what did you do today?" It also gives them something to forward to other parents, which is how next holiday's programme fills.

The moment most coaches miss: the last day

Here's the part that decides whether a programme is a good week or a good business.

A holiday programme is the lowest-commitment way for a new family to try you. They don't sign up for a term. They sign up for five mornings. By the end of the week, they've seen you coach, their child has had a good time, and they trust you more than they trust any coach they haven't met.

That's the best moment you'll ever get to invite them into your regular classes. Most coaches let it pass. The last day ends with a wave at the gate, and the families drift back to whatever they were doing before.

Sports academies have known this for years. Coerver Coaching, a football skills programme founded in 1984, runs holiday camps in countries including Australia, the UK and Japan, alongside its weekly development programmes. The camp fills the holiday; the weekly programme is the business.

You don't need a sales pitch. You need two things, sent within a day or two of the end:

• A short progress note for each participant. What they worked on, one thing they got better at, and one thing to keep practising. Specific and true. This is what turns "that was fun" into "this coach actually noticed my child".

• A clear next step. Your regular class times, with a simple way to join. If you have a trial offer for camp families, this is where it goes.

If you remember one thing from this article, make it this: plan the end of the programme before you plan the first day.

The same logic applies to pricing: a camp family moving into weekly classes is choosing between per-session and packages for the first time. Our package pricing guide covers which one to offer them.

Five mistakes that make a programme harder than it needs to be

Taking bookings in a group chat. "Reply here to join!" gives you a list of names, no payments, no details, and no idea who actually committed.

Selling single days with no daily cap. If families can pick days, every day needs its own limit, or Monday will be oversubscribed while Friday is empty.

No minimum number. Without one, you either run a week at a loss or cancel late and lose the trust of every family who planned around you.

Matching bank transfers by hand. Fifteen transfers with fifteen different references, checked against a spreadsheet the night before camp, is a job nobody should be doing in that week.

Letting the last day be the end. The programme is the start of the relationship, not the whole of it.

Firm structure, human exceptions

A holiday programme rewards structure more than anything else a coach runs. The week is short, the group is new, and there's no time to fix a messy setup once it starts.

But the structure is there to give you room, not to replace your judgement. A clear refund policy is what lets you waive it, deliberately, for the family who needs it. A firm cap is what lets you hold back one spot for the sibling of a child who's already booked, because you chose to. The rules handle the routine. The exceptions are yours.

That's the same line we hold in how we build software: let the system do the bookings, the payments and the reminders, and leave the decisions that involve a person to the coach.

Clazuno is a business management platform for independent coaches and instructors. You can set up a fixed-date holiday programme, workshop or bootcamp with a capacity cap and share one booking link; families book (for themselves or a child) without creating an account, choose the whole programme or selected days, and pay upfront. Custom intake questions collect the details you need at booking, and families choose how they pay. At the end, progress reports go out to every family automatically, so the hand-off to your regular classes happens even in a busy week. See how it works for holiday programmes.