My impression is that golf clubs do not make sufficient use of the potential of golf club management software. To ensure this, I asked Jacek Gulmantowicz, co-founder of Golf Booking Software.
Do you think I was right or not? Here’s an interview with him.
To what extent golf club managers are utilizing their golf club management software?
Golf club management software is especially important. As I see golf clubs are utilizing around 30% of the capabilities and features of such softwares. Some golf clubs have already changed to online golf club management softwares. However, I see many golf clubs that are at the beginning of the digitalization process.
It is beneficial for club managers to understand how such softwares can ease the work of their employees (see employee experience), especially in golf clubs with a significant size of membership. Thus, your precious workforce can focus on other important tasks.
The members and guests will be satisfied since it is easy and quick, and they don’t have to wait for somebody at the reception to pick up the phone for them. Not to mention they can do this at their convenience.
80% of golf club guests and members prefer online booking. In many cases, we see that they do it in the evening on their mobiles.
It can contribute to the automation of processes too. We should not forget it can help golf clubs to achieve extra revenues. For instance, you will be able to generate tee time booking even when the golf club is closed; sell green fees with other services (e.g., golf lessons, golf cart, golf balls, F&B) in a bundle, etc. Or handle properly the “not showing up at tee time” phenomenon.
You will gain much more insights about your customers’ needs and behavior that you can use to improve the quality of customer experience available in your golf club.
Thus, in the future, your online campaigns can provide a proper landing page for people who are interested in your services and avoid huge churn rates from Google and other online campaigns.
How can an online golf club management software help a country’s golf tourism?
I see 3 different areas:
- Local tourism (nearby the golf club),
- Country-level, and
- International tourism.
You can use your golf club management software to send promotional messages and offers to those guests (both regional and national) who visit you less frequently.
For golf clubs, if they promote themselves alone then it can be expensive. Therefore, the national or regional tourism board should promote its golf clubs and golf offers abroad.
When we are talking about inbound golf tourism, it is wise to cooperate with golf travel agencies and provide them well-defined access to the golf club’s booking system to manage easily and quickly the tee time bookings.
This way you will increase the number of bookings. Your business partner will be able to tell in real-time its client if there is a free tee time on the requested day and hour. In Golf-booking.com you can create partner accounts for your most important business partners (e.g. hotels, travel agencies, DMCs, PGA Pros, etc.).
What are the trends in online tee time booking in 2021-22?
The ONLINE tee time booking. We see a huge demand not simply for an online tee time booking solution but for a tee time booking solution that has got a mobile application version as well. Mobile tee time reservations are booming. At the same time, people really want to return to play golf (see the stats from the summer of 2020).
There is a huge demand for being outside and learn how to play golf. We added the feature of ‘golf lessons’ to our system to help PGA Pros but in general the game of golf.
80% of tee time booking will be online. This can be relevant for the Millennials and Generation Z too.
How could golf clubs generate extra revenues with online golf club management software like golf-booking.com?
I have already told you in the first question that you can reduce cost. We should see it as an enabler of future e-commerce operations/solutions. We have noticed that after a successful online tee time booking 10-15% of people are more open to buying other services of the golf club. Therefore in Golf-booking.com golf clubs can offer other golf club services on the very same platform.
Of course, you can utilize various pricing techniques in our system (e.g., dynamic pricing, yield management, etc.).
Recently, we added a golf cart rental optimization feature. It can tell you for instance when the golfer supposed to bring back the golf cart, he/she rented.
By adding all these features, the golf club management software will have a much bigger contribution to revenue generation and be more useful too. Let’s not forget even the tournaments can be managed via golf club management softwares.
Only by using these features, you can earn 10-15% more without marketing. Golf club management softwares are as important today as telephone landlines were a couple of decades ago. Today there are more online bookings than via telephone.
How should golf clubs think of building digital operations? As a goal or as an enabler? Explain it!
I think this is both. For those golf clubs that struggle to dedicate headcounts for marketing tasks, digitalization is just a business goal. Such clubs are looking for easy-to-implement and use solutions.
We saw that after giving training for our golf club clients. They start to come up with development ideas and questions. So golf club management software is a problem solver and enabler at the same time.