Hollywood Lakes New Membership Offer

NapoleonInRags

Just got a text message there from Hollywood Lakes.

They are now offering what they're calling a 'Lifestyle' membership option. Basically you pay €495 membership fee and then a green fee each time you play (amount not specified). Similar deal to the public courses like Corballis, Elm Green etc.

This smacks a bit of desperation to me .... can anyone shed any light on their current state of well being as a club?

TheDoc

Well from AGMs and EGM's etc it appears we are fine.

Just exploring options to gain more flexible membership. There was a few tears shed some levies and fees relating to pensioners and married couples who joined, so they are just exploring new memberships packages.

Meh its a recession, time to get creative.

golfwallah

NapoleonInRags wrote: »

Just got a text message there from Hollywood Lakes.

They are now offering what they're calling a 'Lifestyle' membership option. Basically you pay €495 membership fee and then a green fee each time you play (amount not specified). Similar deal to the public courses like Corballis, Elm Green etc.

This smacks a bit of desperation to me .... can anyone shed any light on their current state of well being as a club?

Offering new membership types isn’t a sign of desperation, IMHO. Rather, it sounds like normal competitive marketing. Granted, it may be innovative for member owned golf clubs.

But then Hollywood Lakes have a track record for being unafraid to try new things. As far as I remember, they were among the first of the Dublin member owned clubs to drop “hello money”.

Other member owned golf clubs have been a lot slower to adapt to the new market realities, despite all the warning signs about declining GUI membership numbers, etc.

In fact, the GUI and PGA jointly published a booklet in 2009 advising clubs that they needed to be more innovative and cost conscious to attract and retain members.

Like it or not, clubs need to compete with what Pay & Play options being offered at other north Dublin venues like Corballis & Elm Green (heavily subsidized by the County Council), Deerpark, Swords Open, Hollystown & Castleknock (privately owned).

If you want to know about their financial wellbeing, why not ask them for a copy of their latest set of audited accounts?

billy3sheets

Fair play to them. I hope they get a load of new members or former members back in.
Flexible membership schemes is where clubs need to go. People's circumstances change for vaious reasons and a monolithic annual fee is difficult for many people to justify. Also, with so much cheap golf on offer, many golfers like to try out other clubs but not necessarily abandon their parent club.

TheDoc

Its really only for people who play once in a blue moon I guess.

€500 plus €15 a pop everytime you play, if in comp thats + €5 which means €20.

So, if you play one comp and one practice round a month ( which is **** all golf)
€35 a month x 12

€920

So I guess a saving of about €400..

brick tamland

TheDoc wrote: »

Its really only for people who play once in a blue moon I guess.

€500 plus €15 a pop everytime you play, if in comp thats + €5 which means €20.

So, if you play one comp and one practice round a month ( which is **** all golf)
€35 a month x 12

€920

So I guess a saving of about €400..

Will also give you a GUI and access to opens so might suit people that way.


I think this kind of membership is going to become wide-spread over the next few years. More flexibility and options is the way to go for golfclubs in this climate.

myleftcheek

Think its a great idea,played there two weeks ago with a society and the course is amazing- great greens and plenty of feature holes.Will definitely have a look at that deal as i'm Struggling to pay my subs for my own course at the moment.I would say alot of clubs will be watching to see how it goes,fair play to them.

DoctaDee

TheDoc wrote: »

Its really only for people who play once in a blue moon I guess.

€500 plus €15 a pop everytime you play, if in comp thats + €5 which means €20.

So, if you play one comp and one practice round a month ( which is **** all golf)
€35 a month x 12

€920

So I guess a saving of about €400..

My understanding of their pricing is Mon-Fri €12, Sat & Sun €15. Also if you wish to play the midweek open it's 15 notes incl comp fee

This initiative has all stemmed from what not that many clubs are prepared to do .. listen to their members/potential members. It's as much to do with retention as new membership. These guys in fairness have been proactively selling their club over the last 6 months or so. I've seen marketing stalls in Pavillions and Millfield and believe they have something organised for the Omni too. A simple phone call would address any concerns or as I say you might fall across them in a shopping centre near you

NapoleonInRags

DoctaDee wrote: »

My understanding of their pricing is Mon-Fri €12, Sat & Sun €15. Also if you wish to play the midweek open it's 15 notes incl comp fee

This initiative has all stemmed from what not that many clubs are prepared to do .. listen to their members/potential members. It's as much to do with retention as new membership. These guys in fairness have been proactively selling their club over the last 6 months or so. I've seen marketing stalls in Pavillions and Millfield and believe they have something organised for the Omni too. A simple phone call would address any concerns or as I say you might fall across them in a shopping centre near you

Good to hear all that - it really is a tempting offer. Also no harm to shake up the membership market a little bit. It might force other clubs to be a bit more innovative with their offers too.

golfwallah

NapoleonInRags wrote: »

Good to hear all that - it really is a tempting offer. Also no harm to shake up the membership market a little bit. It might force other clubs to be a bit more innovative with their offers too.

There’s nothing like a bit of competition to focus the mind – one of the beneficial side effects of the credit crunch.

Once the fat has been cut out on the spending side, golf club running costs tend to be relatively fixed.

So to balance the books, clubs need to maximise revenue by getting the right mix of service packages (bundles of benefits at various price levels to suit peoples’ new spending norms) and customer throughput.

The clubs, outside NAMA, that survive will be those with the best competitive value membership propositions (differentiated prices for various benefit levels), course condition, location, financial stability, etc. As for the rest, watch out for more sad stories from the ones that didn’t do enough to reduce costs and give new and existing members what they want.

P.S., I've nothing to do with Hollywood Lakes but do admire the initiatives they are taking on the marketing front, especially when I observe the inertia displayed by many of their competitors. Good luck to them!

londonred

Great idea can see it being very popular , if you are lucky enough to still have a job and/or a young family then full memembership at over 1000 per year is not viable when you throw in holidays and a few society outings at different clubs.

mike12

TheDoc wrote: »

Its really only for people who play once in a blue moon I guess.

€500 plus €15 a pop everytime you play, if in comp thats + €5 which means €20.

So, if you play one comp and one practice round a month ( which is **** all golf)
€35 a month x 12

€920

So I guess a saving of about €400..

If you look at in these terms that would be 24 rounds for the year or around 38 quid a round.
Options like these will help keep members who rarely play but don't want to leave the club.
If you play 40 plus rounds a year in your home club then u are better off plying the full whack.
The club where i'm a member Bellewstown have had this option for the last couple of years it €290 a year and then pay as you play, full membership is 690 so u only need to play 26 rounds to get up to the full.
If you want membership where u can play a few comps maybe the matchplays and even some interclub stuff but want to spend the rest of the time playing opens then the 290 is a great option.
I can see almost every club doing something similar to try and keep those very occasional golfers.
Mike

billy3sheets

If you take 3 months out when you can't play, then 26 rounds is roughly 3 rounds per month, every 1 of the 9 other months. For many reasonably regular golfers, that's a fair bit of golf at your home club.
Throw in a few games for Opens, work outings, societies and you would have a good diet of golf for a year...

dak

Played there yesterday ( Greens were incredibly fast and hard to read) and asked about the lifestyle membership. Cost is still €495 and the nominal green fee charged is €12 Mon-Friday and €15 at weekends.

Alrite Chief

Cock on the block this kind of membership deal is normal all over the UK and the states. We are miles behind when it comes to this sort of thing. Absolutely nothing wrong with it. Especially if your competitors are doing it. Time for some of this snobbery to be put aside. Not everyone can afford massive subs and joining fees but are great assets to a club.

Clubs should do more for in terms of tailor made membership. Packages that suit a persons lifestyle and pocket. More partnerships should exist too. For example if you are a member in Dunmurray springs you have playing rights in Druids heath and a number of other courses. Can't understand people getting their backs up over things like this.

who_ru

i'm a 5 day member of castleknock, pay 600 euro.

play monday to friday before 10am and it's 15 euro per round, between 10am and 3pm it's 20 euro per round, after 3pm it's 15 euro.

saturday & sunday rounds are standard price on the day which could be 30 euro or more.

all competitions are 20 euro to enter, so doesn't compare to hollywood lakes at all.

having said that the club says it now has full membership, they run competitions on tuesday & thursday for 5 day members, but 20 euro per comp is a bit steep.