Where the European tee time market is heading to?


By: October 1, 2018


First of all, everybody is online today, even the local agencies are online and the tee time market in Europe and in many other parts of the world is bubbling.

Golf Clubs experience tremendous growth in their own online sales, new players are popping up that are focusing all on digital and online sales. But we also see a tendency among traditional TTOO’s to shift more of their customer acquisition to online channels.

Something that is very common on the tee time market today is also that the all the different tee sheet providers also act as a reseller for the golf clubs.

These resellers also give the opportunity to other 3rd parties to sell tee times for the golf clubs, without having any relationships with the golf clubs.

You quickly realize that the market is extremely diverse and the ones with the least control are the golf clubs themselves.

What we experience now among golf clubs is a strive to be more autonomous and be more in control of their product – the tee times. With the current models on the market, it’s hard, something needs to change in the way that the golf clubs sell their tee times.

Especially if they still want to be in charge over the times, pricing and not be spending all their marketing on competing with themselves, their neighbors and their own resellers and TTOO’s, that also by the why constantly undercut the golf clubs own pricing.

Greenfee365 tee time market FINAL

We see a need for a platform controlled by the golf clubs themselves but with the strength of the biggest TTOO’s in terms of driving traffic, developing great UX/CX and that deliver customers and not only guests.

We saw the same in the travel industry and we have seen the same in the hotel industry – now it’s time for the golf industry to get platforms where the ones selling are the ones in charge.

For the golfers, they want instant confirmation, they don’t want to send a request, they don’t want to stand in line, they don’t have time for email and calls – they will choose the platform that is the most convenient and with the best selection of live tee time sales.

What are the latest solutions and innovations in tee sheet software? 

Something that is on everybody’s lips and that a few are experimenting with is dynamic pricing, yield management, and revenue management.

But we can also see more and more connected tee sheet software in terms of being able to have real CRM functionality, dashboards, email providers like MailChimp, mailjet etc. In today’s society systems need to be synced and connected.

Our ambition is to become a natural app in all tee sheet software within a few years to automatically connect and sell tee time inventory in our platform regardless of which tee sheet the golf club use.

We can see that many solutions and innovations go back to the basics and innovate, disrupt and develop around this.

Greenfee365, for instance, is 100% about selling and reaching the modern golfer as easy as possible, getting to know your customers and players and controlling your product on the market but maximizing the sales.

There will also appear totally new opportunities for golf clubs within time to experience new revenue streams and channels by just using existing flows in another way.

Without saying too much, Greenfee365 will take the lead in presenting models for completely new revenue streams as well over the coming period.

We have many things still to come in our quest to give the control over the product to the owners of the products – the golf clubs.

Greenfee365 tee time market 2 FINAL

Which countries in Europe have the largest market share in tee time sales?

Depending if we are talking about online sales of tee times or sales of tee times in general.

We diversify the market in domestic golfing and golf tourism, like in Sweden if you are a golfer and want to play at another club you use the federation’s booking tool in general.

So, they have 95% of the green fee market in terms of bookings and selling green fees to domestic golfers.

But it’s natural that the biggest golf nations have the biggest share of the tee time sales, the UK is a major player both when it comes to domestic golf and golf tourism.

But then, all northern Europe are major tee time markets, Scandinavia, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy etc.

There are so much golf courses and so many golfers that we decided to remove the barriers and see the European market as one. For us there are relevant golfers in all countries for all golf clubs, the hard work is to find them and connect them.

How can Greenfee365 help golf clubs sell tee times more profitable? What is the difference between Greenfee365 and other 3rd party service providers?

First of all, we want to give golf clubs full control over your product and reducing the amount of time and manual labor you have to spend with TTOO’S, local agencies and 3rd party agencies that undercut pricing and super discount prices.

So, no more negotiating prices, poor business models and complex planning. The golf clubs decide all of this on our platform, we don’t interfere with this. The golfer will decide what they are prepared to pay anyway.

Second. Finding customers online today is expensive and takes a lot of time and resources from you. Resources that instead could be used to give your guests an even greater experience while visiting your golf course. We are good at finding the customers and have a great track record in finding customers and golfers.

Third. It’s totally free to join and we do the heavy lifting in terms of marketing. The golf club only pays a flat commission on the generated sales within the platform.

We also wanted to make it really simple for a golf club to join and to automatize their sales flow as much as possible. That’s why all golf clubs in the world already have a profile in our platform.

It just needs to be activated with green fee sales. Don’t worry, we are already connected with the golf clubs tee sheet software provider through their API’s so all they need to do is just to ask to be activated.

But best of all, we don’t keep the customer for ourselves, for us the golfers are simply users that we connect with the right golf club.

The golfer is a customer to the golf club and when our job is done it’s up to the golf club to establish long-term relationships with the customers we provide them with. The customer is the king at the end of the day, and by not receiving only guests with no data.

Greenfee365 tee time market 3 FINAL

Can Greenfee365 provide real-time tee time sales solutions?

We only provide and sell live tee time in our platform and connect directly through API to the tee sheet software provided by the golf clubs. Both selling and buying through Greenfee365 should be convenient.

We don’t believe in doing everything for the golf clubs, we offer one thing and that is sales and customers.

We can help golf clubs automatize their sales by connecting with us, at no risk and a performance-based model where we take hyper-target the right golfer to the right golf club through data-driven marketing.

The golfer can always be sure that the tee time they buy is live, real-time and theirs after it’s booked.

Given a general golf club in Europe, what is the proportion of online sales of total sales for tee times?

This is very unique and depending on the country and how big golf tourism is in that specific country and how regulated the native bookings are.

But many of the clubs that we meet today have around 5-15% from their own online sales channels.

Traditional TTOO’s and local agencies are still the largest “slice of the pie” where they have bought the times pre-paid or at a fixed price based on how much they think they will deliver in volume the coming year.

This is not a very agile model, we see that the golf clubs can benefit greatly from selling their tee times within our platform since we give them customers and a way to increase their own sales, as well as shifting the 3rd party sales from un-controlled channels to controlled channels.

*This article was brought to you by Marcus Ekeberg, CEO & Co-Founder of Greenfee365.