Spring-like temperatures are currently luring tennis enthusiasts back onto the courts across Switzerland, and Zurich is no exception. Finally, you can hit balls outside again - thanks to GotCourts, there are over 1,000 public courts across Switzerland where players can easily find, book and pay for courts without a membership via the user-friendly smartphone app.

The Zurich Sports Office (Das Sportamt Zürich) operates several facilities in the city of Zurich with a total of around 40 public tennis courts at several locations. Since 2014, the Sports Office and GotCourts have been working closely together - GotCourts connects players and tennis facilities, thereby creating great added value for the racket sports community. Since 2021, tennis players have been able to compete throughout Switzerland in the most flexible Swiss tennis league, the GotCourts League. The GotCourts League currently has more than 1,900 registered players and they can arrange matches themselves online via the app when they have time and book courts where it suits them. Anyone can join the GotCourts League and a Swiss Tennis license is not required.

The Sportaktiv association has also been present on these public tennis courts for 40 years, offering tennis courses. "Sports courses for everyone" - the slogan embodies the program of the association, which in addition to tennis and other racket sports offers a total of about 35 sports, for example, martial arts, water sports and winter sports, which are attended by more than 10,000 participants annually. For Sportaktiv, as for GotCourts, the focus is also on popular sports. 

Sportaktiv will also offer tennis courses during the city of Zurich's summer holiday season from July 18 to August 19, 2022. Here you have the opportunity to get to know the racket sport during 4 to 6 lessons or to optimize your technique in small groups. Get an overview yourself:

GotCourts asked Sportaktiv's Managing Director, René Nötzli, and the Tennis Division Manager, Thomas Lützelschwab, about their experiences with GotCourts:

GotCourts: René, since when has Sportaktiv been offering tennis lessons on the public courts in Zurich and how has the course offering developed over the last few years?

René: Tennis has been part of Sportaktiv's offer from the very beginning. As we are celebrating our 40th anniversary this year, we can also look back on 40 years of tennis experience. Basically, the sport has not changed much in all these years and the attractiveness is still high. The possibility to train outdoors and this as flexibly as possible also corresponds to the current zeitgeist.

GotCourts: Thomas, what feedback do you receive from your players about GotCourts and how does GotCourts specifically help you in your daily business?

Thomas: GotCourts simplifies our internal processes a lot. Our tennis instructors can reserve courts for scheduled lessons flexibly and easily and process them directly. The possibility of processing the reservations via the app made GotCourts even more attractive for us and our tennis instructors. This eliminates a large amount of paperwork, which is a great relief for our tennis directors and me as the venue manager.

GotCourts: René, what synergies does GotCourts create with other racquet sports in your program?

René: Since we want to offer squash and padel tennis in addition to tennis, table tennis and badminton in the medium term, the GotCourts platform offers ideal access to the racket sports community. We hope that some new customers will become aware of our offering and book a course with us. 

GotCourts: How many students take part in your racquet sports courses each year? How many specifically in tennis?

René: If we look at the year 2021, we had about 800 bookings in the racket sports with about 90% being tennis.

GotCourts: René, how many tennis coaches do you have? How many tennis lessons do you give per year?

René: At the moment we have 14 tennis instructors working for us. Some of them teach only a few lessons and some of them work for us as tennis coaches. We are happy that we also have two female tennis coaches in our team and hope that we can increase this number in the future.

GotCourts: Thomas, are these players often members of a club or they do not belog to any club and book publicly available courts as external customers?

Thomas: Most of the tennis players of Sportaktiv do not belong to any club, but want to be unattached and do not want to purchase any membership.