NOTE TO GENERAL MANAGERS AND DIRECTORS
OF GOLF: YES, GOLF IS A PRODUCT!
J
ust because you don’t wake up in the morning,
grab your lunch pail and head off to the plant
doesn’t mean you’re not in the manufacturing
business.
of golf, head professional, and the marshals,
starters, and other service personnel who
take their direction from management. (Yes,
players have some impact on flow too, but how
the course is managed is really the key.) The
emotional element must be delivered without
creating the “slow play” frustration and angerproducing incidents and bottlenecks that
positively ruin the playing experience, despite
being a beautiful course in top playing condition.
On survey after survey, course conditioning and
pace of play are consistently ranked as the top
two elements of importance to players, but it is
inevitably pace of play – the emotional element –
which leads.
You absolutely are.
Your club, course or resort property is a kind of
factory and what you create there is a kind of
product. Think about it…the product is the golf
experience you provide to every “customer” (player,
guest, member) who spends time at your facility, and
the memory they take with them. And because your
factory is open from sunup to sundown, you actually
manufacture hundreds of products every day…
thousands of products every month. This is great
news; you have thousands of opportunities every
month to create a high quality product; i.e. a fantastic
golf experience!
What isn’t great news – for you or for your customers
– is when the product isn’t high quality. It isn’t great
news when the golf experience you deliver day after
day is…well…below par. Or maybe it’s only good
between 8 and 10 am. You’ll know your product
isn’t high quality when the pace and flow of play are
poor: when everyone tees off 20 minutes late, when
you see players waiting on every hole, when round
times are way too long, or when you have to discount
rounds beginning at noon. You’ll know your product
isn’t high quality when you hear a steady stream of
complaints about pace of play, or when you feel the
pain of seeing another course with a better product
begin taking over your customers.
WHAT IT TAKES TO CREATE A HIGH
QUALITY PRODUCT
If you want your factory to produce a high quality
product, you have to know (and take seriously!) what
the customer wants, and you have to know how to
consistently deliver it. Just as if you were producing
physical manufactured goods, you need trained
management and staff with the knowledge and skill
to create a golf experience the customers will keep
coming back for…because it has the same high quality
day after day.
On any golf course, there are two elements that
make up the golf experience:
•
•
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The physical element – a beautiful course in
top playing condition makes this element high
quality. This element is in the hands of the course
superintendent and maintenance staff under the
direction of the general manager.
The emotional element – a smooth and freeflowing round of golf with a good pace of play
makes this element high quality. This element
is in the hands of the general manager, director
So, do you know what your customers really want?
It’s certainly not a secret, if you’re listening. Once you
know that, you can learn how to consistently
deliver it.
THE PRODUCT THAT PLAYING CUSTOMERS
REALLY WANT TO BUY
Taking a closer look at what player surveys tell us, in
a recent major study I conducted for the USGA, data
was collected from individual players by asking them
to rate the importance of five items when selecting a
course to play. Their priorities?
1.
Pace of play
2.
Course conditioning
3.
Customer service
4. Price
5.
Food and beverage
Decades of studies by golf associations have proven
that having a good pace of play is critical to the long
term success of the course and the game itself. These
studies show that courses with a reputation for slow
play and waiting will lose players and revenue. Recent
samples:
•
A 2014 study commissioned by the USGA found
that “Nearly 75% of golfers strongly agree that
pace of play is critical to contributing to ones
enjoyment of a round of golf.”
•
Last year the R&A conducted a worldwide study
on pace of play in which “players noted that ‘work
commitments,’ ‘family commitments,’ and ‘the
time it took to play,’ were the key factors which
prevented them from playing.” We all know time
is too precious to waste on a poor experience.
•
And this year a whopping 82.3% of players in
Australasia said that, “playing in less time would
increase their enjoyment of the game.” The
message in all current findings is that there is
little tolerance today for slow play and long round
times.
The Golf Marketing Professionals www.golfindustrycentral.com.au