GIVING YOUR MEMBERS AND GUESTS THE EXPERIENCE THEY EXPECT WITHOUT HAVING TO BREAK THE BANK

When the time for budget allocation rolls around, private courses will once again be faced with a choice.

Whilst some may adopt an ‘if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’ approach, the opportunities now available through the advancements in golf club management software have caused a major rethink amongst top courses.

The issue is a simple one. Private courses exist around one core purpose – to provide and sell an experience. Given that they are member driven, ensuring a consistently superior outing is key to their continuing success.

This means a club’s budget will always be built around its members, what they expect and value, and what areas need to be invested in to improve their experience.

With Tagmarshal having tracked and improved 7 million rounds of golf while working with over 200 courses in 9 countries, it has become clear what matters most to golfers as far as their experience expectations go:

1. Course conditioning: 82% of golfers say conditioning is key to a great experience. (USGA survey)
2. The flow of play: 76% of players say the flow on the course, the pace and respecting their time is crucial to their enjoyment. (USGA survey)

As always, the time, effort and significant resources that go into course conditioning are exhaustive, often with close to 50% of a private course’s annual budget being earmarked for this.

To the contrary, the on-course experience and the flow of play, however, remains totally under-utilized as a way to improve a player’s enjoyment, even though it is such a crucial and “easy to improve” feature of the golf experience you provide.

A bigger budget spend is not always an option, but it’s not always the answer, either. With Tagmarshal being such an affordable solution, private courses are now looking at golf course intelligence technology to streamline operations, save costs through enhanced operational productivity, ensure optimization of resources and staff hours, all while creating a continuous field flow and the exceptional on-course playing experience.

As a golf course intelligence software provider, Tagmarshal is leading the way on this front, helping course management to revolutionize their operations while creating an incredible pace and field flow.

The results speak for themselves and because of this, players now have more time to spend at the Pro Shop and the clubhouse, ultimately generating additional revenue opportunities across various departments.

Chief Operations Officer of The Country Club at Castle Pines, can bear testament to that: “The unobtrusive GPS tracking tags and easy-to-use data analytics have made adopting the technology into our operations a simple, gratifying process.”

“The data and statistics collected from Tagmarshal on pace of play prepares you for your board meeting noting the value of having a complete understanding of play on the course.”

With the insightful, qualitative data that Tagmarshal’s technology provides, management can now produce detailed reports that are invaluable when developing budgets and making management decisions.

Many private clubs keep the Tagmarshal system budget neutral by balancing the investment with reduced labour requirements. Course data also shows increase in F&B and Pro Shop spend in line with players having more time available post round – a 10% reduction of at risk or slow rounds is worth +$80 000 in F&B revenue opportunity a season. So with all the proven player experience and operations benefits the system provides, it certainly pays for itself and provides revenue opportunity on top.

Much like the golfers who pack their bags with the latest club, it has become essential for golf facilities to free up their budget to embrace the necessary technology that will ultimately provide a superior member experience.

This budget season, many leading private courses will choose to make that investment in technology. Quite simply, that will be the smartest decision they make all year.

About the author:

Bodo Sieber, CEO, and Co-founder of Tagmarshal

Bodo brings a wealth of business intelligence and software applications experience to the golf industry. A German national with an extensive understanding of golf course operations and process optimization, Bodo has honed his applied data science expertise during more than a decade in the field.