A venue with six lanes open 40 hours a week has 240 lane-hours of capacity to sell, whether it books all of them or none. Utilization is the share actually sold: booked lane-hours divided by available lane-hours. It is the single number that tells you whether to add a lane, add hours, or leave the schedule alone.
126 booked hours out of 160 available is 78.8% utilization.
The example
Three weeks with the same six-lane venue at different booking levels.
| A | B | C | D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Week | Booked hours | Available hours | Utilization |
| 2 | Sep 1-7 | 126 | 160 | 78.8% |
| 3 | Sep 8-14 | 98 | 144 | 68.1% |
| 4 | Sep 15-21 | 150 | 168 | 89.3% |
The formula
Just the two totals divided — the work is in getting them right:
How it works
The formula is trivial; the inputs are where care matters:
C2(available hours) should be lanes × hours open, not just hours open — a six-lane venue open 40 hours has 240 available lane-hours, not 40.B2(booked hours) should count only confirmed, paid bookings — a walk-in that never showed still consumed the lane-hour if it was blocked on the schedule and no one else could book it.B2/C2divides the two, and formatting the cell as a percentage turns 0.788 into 78.8% for the reader.
Track utilization by lane, not just venue-wide — one consistently underused lane can hide behind a healthy overall average.
Try it: interactive demo
Enter booked lane-hours and available lane-hours for the week.
Variations
Available hours from lanes times hours open, built up
Instead of typing the available-hours total by hand, calculate it from lane count and hours open so a schedule change (an extra Friday-night hour) updates it automatically.
Utilization target vs actual as a variance
Compare against a target utilization to see how far off the week ran, positive meaning ahead of goal and negative meaning behind.
Pitfalls & errors
A private-party block that reserves the whole venue for two hours counts as (lanes × 2) booked hours, not just 2 — forgetting to multiply by lane count understates utilization on the venue's busiest bookings.
90% utilization is not necessarily the goal. Very high utilization on a walk-in-friendly venue means turning away same-day customers — track both utilization and turn-aways together before deciding whether to add a lane.
If available hours is ever entered as 0 (a week the venue was closed for renovation), the formula returns #DIV/0!. Wrap it in IF(C2=0,"closed",B2/C2) if closed weeks appear in the same sheet as open ones.
Practice workbook
Frequently asked questions
What is a healthy utilization rate for a bookable-lane venue?
Should league nights count in booked hours?
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