Through our numerous assignments and research initiatives at Global Golf Advisors over the last twelve months, we have encountered both unique challenges and consistent trends at golf facilities throughout the EMEA territory. Here, I have identified five that are particularly noteworthy for their influence on current golf facility performance at European Clubs.

1. Capital Maintenance Trends

Capital maintenance, capital improvements and the funding of both are amongst the greatest challenge facing golf facilities now and are expected to continue to be so into the immediate future. 40% of clubs are reporting that they have more than three year’s worth of deferred capital maintenance and expenditure, largely a consequence of economic recession/stagnancy between 2009 and 2015.

Long-term capital planning is rare, with most clubs lacking a formal plan to fund capital requirements, using whatever cash is available each year to fund their reserves. Less than 50% have a capital reserve study in place informing long-term capital requirements. Of those that are investing in capital, almost 6 in 10 are using a combination of debt and membership levy to fund their programs.

Clubs spend on average 7.6% of gross annual revenue on capital maintenance but estimate they need to spend 9.6% to keep pace with capital maintenance.

2. Women make the ‘buy’ decision

Historically golf clubs have been institutions that served male viewpoints, wants and needs. New programs and services are changing membership structures, methods of club governance and the feasibility of many clubs.

In her book, “Marketing to women” Martha Barletta indicates that 91% of home purchase decisions are made by a woman. Typically, the club membership decision is a part of the home choice decision due to location, psychographic and demographic profile.

As such, clubs must reset membership programs to address the primary push/pull factors that influence the buy decision. Women prize their clubs as a platform for socialization. Clubs must demonstrate in clear and appealing ways that the lifestyle of the club is diverse, active and accessible for busy women and their families.

Sales and marketing tactics in forward- thinking clubs are seeking to address schedule flexibility, interesting and current programs and the opportunities for meeting and keeping friends.

3. Business Intelligence

There is increasing adoption amongst clubs of more sophisticated business intelligence for decision-making. This includes the tracking and analysis of financial and operational performance trends, market pricing trends and positioning, member satisfaction and net promoter score (NPS), comparable club benchmarking and targeted market segmentation.

Club Boards/Management have an increasing need for quantitative, interfaced data to afford informed decision-making about the club.

Club Managers continue to report feeling pressure due to performance comparisons to benchmarks and competitors in all areas, especially as they relate to dues, fees, compensation, benefits, pricing, and staff levels. Other leaders struggle to meet their Board’s demand for data which has led to an increase in staff hours to track, monitor, analyze, and produce data. Some GMs have found traditional sources of data to be insufficient in providing the data their Board/Owner wants.

Top performers are tracking specific internal and external market KPIs and act upon them to sustain the market position. Many clubs – which lack the comfort of capital or staff resources to execute their own intelligence program – rely on frequent, concise surveys that monitor customer satisfaction, such as the secret shopper program provided so effectively by 59Cub. Some have even tied staff bonus incentives to member/customer satisfaction ratings.

More recently many clubs have turned to subscription-based services such Global Golf Advisors’ Strategic Intelligence Platform to track operating performance, customer satisfaction, and competitive market data all in one central portal.

4. Sustainability

Last July, London’s new Mayor Sadiq Khan announced a ‘crackdown’ on pollutants. His goal is to “Make London one of the World’s most environmentally friendly cities”. His plan to achieve this goal includes amongst other things creating an ‘Ultra-Low Emission Zone in central London by 2019 and beyond central London by 2020.

The fact that Mr. Khan has placed this issue near the very top of his agenda, is a great indicator of just how much influence sustainability and environmentalism has on the public mindset – politicians don’t tend to tackle issues unless they are going to improve their popularity.

Many clubs are now rightly keen to present their sustainability credentials, but to have resonance, consumers want to know the details/specifics and the outcomes. For clubs, this means their efforts in this space should be measured and proactively reported, with the support of a trusted third party.

The Golf Environment Organization is doing extraordinary work in supporting clubs achieve exactly this. Their club tools are not just providing vital guidance on best practice for sustainable performance, but are now also providing measurement and reporting tools to aid in effective communication of the results of such performance.

5. Membership

Gone are the days when most clubs were operating with waitlists and a pipeline full of members lined up to join the club. The reality is that most clubs must now aggressively seek and find new members. Successful clubs are adopting a more data-driven approach to membership recruitment/retention and are adjusting membership and amenity offerings to be more competitive in their business space.

61% of clubs map the location of their members to identify trends and areas for new member growth. Global Golf Advisors recommends that clubs do this annually to maximize membership sales effectiveness.

Six in ten clubs have encountered challenges with an aging membership or growing senior member category. Two-thirds of this group has adopted a set of tactics to address these challenges, among which adjustments to age bands and entry fees are most common solutions.

More than one in four (28%) clubs have experienced a decline in their total number of members in the last 5 years. The annual attrition rate of clubs in the UK is 3.5% while in the rest of Europe that rate is 4.7%.

The top three factors for creating a sustainable membership strategy include

1. improve overall amenity quality,
2. embracing modern technologies to complement modern lifestyles, and
3. further enhancing the club’s platform for connecting its membership.

Trends such as these, although not universally applicable, are highly valuable indicators of change. The capacity to be prepared for change and take advantage of the opportunities that come with it, is what marks a successful club. Best put by Darwin, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change”.

Rob Hill is a Partner at GGA with responsibility for their EMEA Office. A former recipient of Boardroom Magazine’s “Strategic Planning Firm of the Year” award, GGA brings an unmatched financial, marketing and operational focus to each of its strategic assignments. The firm serves over 2,700 clients around the world from offices in USA, Canada, Sydney (Asia-Pacific) and Dublin (EMEA). Rob can be reached at rhill@globalgolfadvisors.com.

“Tell people – and they may forget….show them – they may remember…involve them and they will understand”

In the last couple of years, I have seen many initiatives that tried to foster women’s participation in golf:

• Golf For Her: This is dedicated to women and girls, but a very simple program. It needs some pushing.
• Get Golf Ready: by the PGA of America: probably the most advanced golf program. 107,485 men and women participated in this program in 2015. But it is not dedicated to women.

I think all of us went through that tiresome learning process (in my case it was very technical) on the driving range before we got our HCP what we call the basics of golf. We could hardly see what will be like playing on a normal golf course, except those few instances when we were taken by our PGA Pro on his golf cart around the golf course or when we looked out from the balcony of the clubhouse.

If this is not annoying enough for you as a golfer then let’s add to this what Syngenta found about women‘s expectations from golf.

They want a fun social golf experience. Yes, golf coaches and PGA Pros equally have to understand that they have to provide lessons not just based on the golfer’s knowledge and skills, but they also have to consider the other needs (e.g. to socialize with other people; cheerful conversations instead of preaching) of the female “want-to-be golfer”.

PGA Pros have to make the female golfer the heroines of the game to succeed and keep up these women’s engagement with the game. This will not happen on the driving range that is for sure.

To activate 36.9 million latent female golfers and “want-to-be” female golfers, I think the golf industry needs a much more focused approach than the above-mentioned initiatives. Any future initiative should not only be a program of a couple of lessons, but rather a series of lessons that are building on each other. So the female golfer will not stop and get lost after the “intro lessons”.

What comes close to my ideal solution is the love.golf program (supported by Syngenta) in the UK. It is a fun social golf experience designed specifically for women. The lessons are happening in a relaxed and informal atmosphere. This could be implemented also for men. What is more interesting that the participants are learning the game in real life environment, on the golf course and not on the driving range. What a difference!

It is also promising in this program that the female golfer can get follow-on programs.

I cannot agree more with Syngenta Golf Ambassador Carin Koch, who said last year:

“While love.golf has been designed specifically with women in mind, it’s actually a great way for anyone to learn the game and it was nice to see male and female work colleagues getting out on a course and enjoying their first taste of golf…”

It seems like the knowledge and insights of love.golf is valuable for other players in the golf industry. Love.golf is cooperating now with the TGI Golf Partnership and its network of more than 450 PGA Professionals. These PGA Professionals will learn how to sell golf equipment more effectively to women.

I was really happy to read Frank Vain’s (president of McMahon Group) article about increasing usage of technology (in many instances social technology) in private golf clubs to improve connectivity, reduce operating costs and increase revenue (not to forget new member sales as well) [things that could apply to other types of clubs too].

Every day, an increasing number of connected consumers (yes, private golf club members as well!!) are taking to social networks to ask for help or express sentiment (social posts, blogs & reviews) related to business- or product-related experiences. The reality is that social media is the new normal and will only continue to grow.

In addition to this smart phone and mobile application usage does not belong solely to the under 45 age group and will also only continue to grow over the coming years.

Online banking, online booking and online shopping are now part of our daily life. So those who think ‘if we use social and other new technologies in our sales and CRM activities it will alienate golf club members’, then I must say: they are wrong.

In a recent survey of The Economist Intelligence Unit, 60% of the surveyed North American executives (not from the golf industry) said they will invest in 2013 and in the following years in socila media and technology.

Companies should view social technologies not as another tool to utilise, but as an enabler of organisational transformation as well. Those who don’t recognise this will fail to identify the specific organisational problems social technologies can solve. I think it is important to facilitate collaboration among employees.

Needless to say companies/golf clubs must define their objectives, select technology and then consider what kind of organisational change supports the new objectives.

Therefore private golf club managers (and other golf club managers as well) should think about the following 3 major challenges: Customer experience, Conversation management and Collaboration with clients (suppliers as well),golf club members, and golf club workers.

Since July 2012 I have looked at several solutions and ideas that can help golf club managers and owners to reach their business goals and objectives. Here are some of them:

• Mobile applications
• Golf social networking sites
• Dynamic pricing
• Social CRM

These ideas and concepts could be used within a company/golf club as well. We should inspire our workforce to innovate and collaborate more productively. This way we can create tangible business value.

Probably the biggest challenge of social technology implementations is how we can build them into the corporate culture.

How have you incorporated social technology into your golf club/business? Leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments box below.

As I promised you yesterday, today, Aimee Burke (Sales & Marketing Director Kemper Sports, The Ridge Club) will show us the challenges of expanding golf club membership. Aimee Burke will give some advice and tricks. Her article/post will continue soon. Here is the first part.

Here are her thoughts:

“If you’re lucky to have a dedicated sales person inside the club driving membership, one could assume you have a systematic sales process, dedicated sales CRM, strategic annual marketing plan, analytics on ROI, and tracking of lead sources from advertising efforts.

“Many small golf clubs may have to shuffle the responsibly of sales to the general manager or additional full time staff. This can be a challenge considering the volume a typical golf department and club restaurant will see during their peak seasons.

“Add in the fact that we as an industry have a shrinking population of golfers to pull from combined with some basic sales stats and it can be a real challenge to drive memberships in a season. Regardless of your current structure, knowing where your leads are coming from and being able to measure your ROI on the ones that deliver are keys to reinvesting into the appropriate marketing channels.

“One could hardly argue that the best source of membership prospects come from current, happy members. Let’s assume for arguments sake that your sales person is asking for referrals. But how do we compound and capture this information?

“I have seen members hang onto valuable prospect information, many times stating to me, “Let me work on him first and then I’ll have him call you.” We’ve all been in this scenario. And to the seasoned sales professional, we shake our heads as we see the member trying to start and end the sales cycle on their own. Many times they come back and say “he’s not interested”… and you never even had a chance.

“So how do you get the prospect information from the member without seeming too pushy?

“Another lost opportunity for prospect leads and member referrals are golf guests. Very often I am in conversation with a prospect and they tell me that they’ve golfed at the course a few times. How frustrating is it to know that there have been multiple opportunities to engage the prospect as a guest yet no process to capture their information for a systematic follow up!”

To be continued….

Golf Business Monitor’s Miklós Breitner assesses the ways in which these new devices could be leveraged by your marketing team.

The usage of wearables is not totally new to the golf industry. Those who were lucky enough to attend the Ryder Cup were able to experience the advantages of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). This got me thinking about how pro-shops and other golf retail outlets could utilise wearables.

For many of us, if I ask them about wearables, the following things come to their mind: Google Glass, smartwatches (e.g. Motoactv of Motorola), and activity trackers (e.g. Fitbit). In 2014 there were more searches on Google for wearable devices than for fitness apps.

As usage increases we need to think how could we maximise these technologies to enhance customer experience in pro-shops and golf retail outlets.

At the moment I can see 3 major areas where wearable technologies could be utilised – in this first part of the article we’ll look at the first:

Providing more product information

Bricks-and-mortar companies have to compete with online retailers. Needless to say that online it is easier to obtain relevant information (and reviews) about products and services and compare them. Some retailers are already using QR codes to provide extra product information, such as Best Buy in the US adding QR codes to the fact tags.

Our challenge is to find out how to utilise wearable technologies to provide personalised offers and solutions in real-time. Customers today are expecting more and more relevant offers, greater access to deals and promotions and fast checkout (I will talk about payment solutions in the next part of the article). More importantly, once the customer walks in, the store can immediately engage him or her with services.

If the customer opts to provide personal information via wearable, this can give retailers further opportunities for marketing.

I would not neglect the demand generation capability of wearables. Burberry’s solution, launched in 2013 (see video on this page), is a good example where the company embedded a textile RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) label into its products. Burberry were then able to provide bespoke multimedia content specific for certain products.

Another interesting aspect is how your sales team communicates with customers in the pro-shop. We should think how we could support their work with extra information via wearable devices – for example, ongoing communication; remind the shop assistant that he is dealing with a loyal customer and what the customer’s brand preferences are, their shoe size, preferred payment solution etc.

We could also avoid the embarrassing situations when colleagues called to a certain place within the golf club via loudspeaker. In addition to this the wearable can improve employee efficiency, enhance training and reduce nonproductive time.

The Container Store (TCS) for instance in 2014 replaced its walkie-talkie system with Theatro Wearable (a wearable in-store communications device clipped to employees’ shirts) to improve the communication among its workers.

To succeed we must integrate the implemented wearable solutions with our point of sale, CRM, order management, campaign management and web content management systems. For integration to be effective then we are reliant on developers creating programming interfaces/APIs but this will no doubt take place as time goes on. I am less worried about security and privacy since our employees are used to being monitored.

In the upcoming second part of the article Miklós will look at 2 more areas where wearable technology could be utilised.

This article originally featured in International Golf Pro News. Visit the IGPN Page to find out more and subscribe for free.