Not so long time ago I wrote about golf course workers' salaries and benefits. From the study of Club Managers Association of Europe (CMAE) and Colt Mackenzie McNair turned out that 50% of those who are possessing senior roles in European golf courses have no adequate education since they came from different industries. Now as more and more golf course managers are realizing that something has be changed and probably we reached the level of urgency (see theory of John Kotter), I was happy to read about an e-learning program for golf course managers initiated by European Golf Course Owners Association and Club Managers Association of Europe (+Hotelschool The Hague Performance Management BV). This 6-weeks long training covers the following areas:
- Strategic marketing for clubs (incl. market research, writing marketing plan etc.)
- Membership models and options, products and services for customer groups, strategies for attracting visitors
- Communications techniques for clubs, including internal and external
- Customer service standards, expectations and delivery
- F&B concepts and strategies, for in-house F&B teams and clubs with out-sourced catering contractors
- Managing F&B operations
I think 6 weeks is not enough to grasp the essence of each area. It should be at least 1-2 years program. From there press release (of course it was not social media optimized but rather in style of web 1.0) it is not clear whether which size of golf courses' management they are targeting. For whom it will provide the highest ROI. As part of Communication techniques they will teach new media. I guess it is going to be social media or even search engine marketing. To consider social media as "new media" is a joke and give such big attention to newsletters instead of to search engine marketing and mobile marketing is really sad