thewobbler wrote: » It’s called supply and demand. If your product isn’t getting the sales it needs to return a profit, you either stop selling the product, or you rebadge it and sell it as something else. If you don’t, you’re going out of business. Golf club membership in NI has allegedly fallen by 30% in 15 years, even though in real terms, golf club (traditional member model) membership has never been cheaper, and never been easier to attain. All to a backdrop of 3 major winners, home of The Open, a series of Irish Opens, and the now mythological status of RCD and Portrush all ensuring that public interest in the sport has never been higher. So when members of rural courses in Armagh, Antrim, Derry, Down, Fermanagh and Tyrone ask the question “Why should clubs have to cater for those who don't care if they close or not?”, they’re actually asking the wrong question. They should be asking “if we want a golf club in this town, how can we cater for as many people as possible in this town?”. ——Members longing for days of yore to return are slowly killing the clubs they proclaim to love.
GreeBo wrote: » I'm sure you can't, but I'd check with your treasurer and committee before you roll out the new model. Let's say the average full member plays 20 competitions a year, that's pretty much every weekend during the summer months and a bit before and after. Using your model that would cost them 900 ish. So they have saved 500 ish on their previous costs. The club can't recoup these as that prime playing slot is still used up u that same golfer. Where does money now come from? If this is the average member and the average club has 500 members, now your club is down 125,000 a year with no more golf slots to sell than they had before your model. I just don't see how you think the numbers work for the club, clearly they work for you! What you need to remember is that clubs are not trying to make money, they are trying to be self financing. There is no owner taking the profits home at the end of the year. What your post really distills down to is that you want to be a member without having to pay for it because you can't use it 7 days a week. You need to stop thinking about it as a gym membership, it's a club that you are buying a part of, you are not just renting the course for a few hours.
paulanthony wrote: » Ok, let's just leave it as it is so. There's clearly absolutely no possible room for any other models / offerings than those which have been used for the last hundred years? I'll give myself as an example. Currently not a member anywhere. With a small child etc I'm not going to join a club on a full membership paying (and I'm using St Margaret's here as an example as it has its prices online) €1,395 a year as that would probably cost be well in excess of €100 per round and I don't really have that spare. I'm also not going to join as a 5 day member for €749 as I work M-F so that's just not a runner, even if it was half that price. So I'm not someone who would be downgrading from a full sub to an alternative one. I would however join if they offered the following for say €300ish: Associate membership, GUI, 8 rounds a year (4 M-F, 4 Weekends but not before 10am), can't play the weekends of the club majors, extra rounds €15 Mon-Thur ¦ €20 Fri ¦ €30 Sat/Sun (plus all the other usual exclusions from interclub teams, committees etc). I can't see that being too disruptive to the full members. Between the sub and a few additional green fees, meals, spend in the shop this would potentially amount to a €500-600 spend by me over the season. 20 of those = €10k. It also gives me the opportunity to be a member somewhere and participate in the sport. Hopefully I then become a full member five years later. I appreciate people will just reply saying sure let's design memberships to totally suit you and your requirements, but I expect that would suit a lot of people and encourage them to take the plunge and join a club. I don't think it would encourage Mr/s Saturday comp for the last 15 years to downgrade (unless s/he was planning to give up membership anyway).
blue note wrote: » This is exactly the type of golfer that clubs are getting virtually nothing from at the moment. There's no point in joining anywhere in those circumstances really, so you'll just do something else instead. It's extremely difficult to balance off getting as much out of these people as you can, not losing full members to your new membership options and not having your full members feel like they are subsidising the other golfers. I think 7 day pay and play options are underused. That's what I have in corballis and I find it great. Thanks to a period of unemployment I've actually spent 25% more than I would have had I become a full member, but I couldn't have known that when I joined. Now I'm hoping to play about once a fortnight to once a month which would work out about the same price as full membership. But if I only get to play 6 times in the year, I'll pay about 60% of full membership, it'll only cost me €65 per round (or you could say the club will get €65 for 6 spots on the timesheet), but I'll get to play in comps, opens will be available to me and I'll be a member somewhere which I want. And even though I've paid far more than green fees is have been, I won't mind too much because I won't have sunk a full membership fee at the start of the year. But clubs should check out the figures with regard to pay and play and see how they look. If someone is only using it once a month they're only using up 12 spots on the time sheet in the year. If you have a €500 pay and play option you'd be getting €60 for each of these slots (sounds much better than offering cheap green fees on line). If they use it 20 times they might end up paying the equivalent of a full membership. So the people you'd be worried about moving to the pay and play option would be the ones who are using their membership very little at the moment. And clubs should be worried about losing these people already! You'd also have the benefit of these pay and play people possibly taking up full membership later, sending their kids to the club, bringing in new members, green fees, etc. There's also the golf club catastrophe around the corner from older members retiring their memberships / dying without younger members to replace them. This is going to accelerate some year and clubs will find themselves losing members hands over fist all of a sudden. They should be trying to recruit new members now to replace them before it's too late.
Wichita Lineman wrote: » Our full membership is €600 per year so it's not like we are fleecing people who don't play as much. I appreciate that it gets expensive per round if it's over €1k like a lot of Dublin / larger urban centre clubs can charge as they have the numbers available to them. If everyone is playing to the cheapest common denominator then the clubs wont survive and it's not all about economics, as I said we are not a corporate owners profit making club. I do think that some people on here have absolutely no idea of the effort, energy and time that it takes to keep small clubs alive.
blue note wrote: » I'd still say a P&P 7 day option is worth looking at. You probably have a few members who hardly get to play. If that goes on for a couple of years they'll leave. They'll look and say I've played about 20 times over the last 3 years, 90 quid per round, easy decision. Whereas if there was a €300 pay and play option, I'd be likely to keep that in the hope I'd use it, but also to stay in touch with the club, keep a handicap, etc. If I then played a dozen rounds and paid €15 for each the club would be down €150 from me instead of €600. And for those once a fortnight golfers it wouldn't be worth their while to switch. If you price so that playing once a week works out the same as full membership you're shooting yourself in the foot. If you price it right you can increase your revenue, not devalue your course, clog up the timesheet and improve your prospects for the future. As regards the work members do to run a club - the guys barely playing don't do this already. If they had more time to go to the club, they'd play more golf. I could imagine members giving out about this of course. But they won't leave, they'll just moan. Roughly speaking I think half price membership, half price green fees is about right. But closing yourself off to members who can't play regularly just seems misguided to me. And definitely stuck in the past.
blue note wrote: » And why did it fail? Was it the pricing structure of it? €5 per round seems far too small to me. It works on corballis so I do think it's a model that can work. Possibly not everywhere, but you'd really need to know the reason it failed to be able to say much about it. But what happened? Was the membership for this option significantly cheaper than full membership and people changed over to that and the difference wasn't made up? I think anyone playing 20 times a year on pay and play needs to be paying about the equivalent of full membership for it to work. And actually, if you tried it you're not stuck in the past, but I think ye just didn't get it right.
paulanthony wrote: » Wow - €70 a round - these "average" guys must really subscribe to your member of a club philosophy!
paulanthony wrote: » Some people do just want to play a bit of golf, and don't have the resources in terms of time and/or money to do the whole joining fee, big sub, comps every Saturday thing etc.
paulanthony wrote: » Tell me, if a friend of yours in a nice (but financially struggling due to too few members) club down the country (say outside a large county town) phoned you up and said: I've been appointed as corporate/marketing manager for X club and basically we aren't sustainable as things stand - we need to bring in more revenue. Any suggestions? What would you tell him (apart from let the market do its job and then join another course 25 miles down the road along with 50 other members from your club)?
GreeBo wrote: » I think as soon as you are working out your cost per round you have moved out of the idea of membership.
s00bf06e wrote: » Hi, I’m planning on taking the year out but want to keep my handicap going in case I play the odd open comp. what is the lowest golf club membership with gui for 2020 that people have come across. Distance member at slievenamon GC is the lowest I’ve seen @ €150
blue note wrote: » . I'd think the same way with gym membership - if I use it once per month this will cost me €40 per trip to the gym or whatever. .
doublecross wrote: » Don't think that rule is being enforced.
princess poppy wrote: » Definitely being enforced for inter club competitions
GreeBo wrote: » A golf club is not a gym. The your post just reads like you want clubs to offer something that just suits you and to help with the clubs finances. This doesn't suit and that doesn't suit, etc, etc. You keep missing that your cheap Saturday round is blocking a full member from playing, the the club is missing out on that 700. They are not winning at all. The full member guarantees them 700, whether they play or not, with you they might get 480, or they might get nothing...who knows?! But they still have to include you when determining how many members can play as no one will pay anything if the club is over subscribed. 25-35 has always been an issue for golf, its when people are starting work, families and probably still playing other sports at the weekend, this isn't something new or recent.
blue note wrote: » And if course clubs have to consider capacity when working out how much membership they can offer. If they're lucky enough to be in the situation where they're oversubscribed, then they probably don't have to look at pay and play options, although I'd say it's a good idea to keep the younger members members. In a very similar way to what clubs are doing with intermediate membership up to 35 years old now. And I don't hear a kerfuffle over that. But they can we in and not offer too many pay and play packages to begin with while they're seeing how much they use it. And then when they know how much each category will likely use the course then they can decide how much to offer.
thewobbler wrote: » @Greebo, here’s the thing. By highlighting that intermediates are causing a kerfuffle in most clubs, you’re trying to push it across as evidence that tiered membership doesn’t work. Whereas I would interpret this problem as one that was only created because a one-size-fits-all approach was failing in many clubs. And it’s those who are obsessed with a business model that wasn’t working, who do all the complaining. It would seem that their preferred approach to golf club sustainability is to push their head in the sand and make it a problem for the next generation.
thewobbler wrote: » @mike12, there is likely no other product in the world that has maintained the same pricing structure since golf membership began. Open markets and supply and demand will always drive change. The thought process that begins with “this is the way we have always done it” is one of the most dangerous for any organisation.
Raisins wrote: » I think there’s a decent number of members wrapped up in the traditional membership model who pay big money annually and do the whole “I’ll play this year” but never actually really use the membership. I think that number is dwindling because many people are stretched which is hurting the member owned clubs with traditional membership models. The 50 something plays every sat morning merchants won’t ever recognise that..they also claim they’re funding the whole place alone.
blue note wrote: » And I was looking at the corballis pay and play option. If you play 21 times or less it would be cheaper to pay green fees. 25 times or more and it would be cheaper to pay full membership. There's a tiny window where pay and play is the cheapest option.
thewobbler wrote: » If every club in Ireland steadfastly retains the traditional membership model, surely the only outcome is fewer golf clubs?
