The National Golf Foundation’s latest annual state-of-industry Graffis Report had a very interesting finding. Namely, while on-course participation in golf increased by 2% from 2021 to 2022, off-course participation in the game rose by 13% in that same time period.
Do not think this is just in the US! Research led by The R&A, together with England Golf, Golf Ireland, Scottish Golf, and Wales Golf shows that 5.6 million on-course adult golfers – the second-highest number since monitoring began over 30 years ago – enjoyed playing on full-length courses (9 or 18 holes) in GB&I last year.
I am witnessing that more and more golf clubs understand the importance of investing in driving range experience and indoor golf.
Such investments can answer at least 3 business challenges at the same time:
- By improving the driving range experience, we can attract even “armchair golfers” and non-golfers too by utilizing driving range & indoor golf technology solutions.
- Help you to relieve the scarce capacity of your golf course.
- A new source of revenue: extra F&B revenues.
If we have achieved this, the next challenge will be how to maximize our indoor golf revenues. I will show you how you can do it.
Today it is not enough simply to collect customer data. A 2021 McKinsey Study on Data and Personalisation showed that companies that capture more value from data grow faster, driving “40% more revenue” from data programs with personalized sales and marketing tactics and activities.
No tech stack, no marketing plan, and no sales funnel can do its job without good data – it is the earliest source of a revenue strategy.
We have to move away from a system of record to a system of revenue. This is one of my concerns regarding booking systems that focus mainly on administration, cost-cutting, and effectiveness. How can they help increase profitability and enable optimization?
When we think about data collection, we are no longer talking about a database of records. We are talking about engagement.
We need to understand the customer profiles and behavior, and then link strategies to them to drive revenue.
Identifying customer types
Identifying customer types makes it possible to gain insights that are necessary to develop the most relevant offers.
This means that you need to refine your potential target groups and customer types to find golfers for peak time, but also for your empty non-peak time tee time zones.
When you combine the buyer profile with buying insights, you have clear guidance for the decisions you need to make to sell more green fees, but also other services of the club.
This is true not only for golf courses and tee time sales but also for indoor golf venues.
For these reasons, Sweetspot’s revenue management solution for clubs, sim-golf facilities, driving ranges, and professionals is a game changer. It can help you to transform your indoor golf venue into a data-driven business too.
A business intelligence position is hard to create and even pricey. This is why the Sweetspot platform is a big help in this.
How much is it worth to you to easily access actionable insights such as:
- Revenue per golf simulator and hour.
- Occupancy on less demanded days and times 🡪 adjust the pricing accordingly.
- Number of members.
- Revenue per member.
- etc.
You can find out all these – among others – using Sweetspot.
The Sweetspot Simulator platform can manage…
- Bookings – Web, App, and Drop-Ins
- Payments – Credit Card, Google, and Apple Pay
- Dynamic Pricing – Algorithm based on supply and demand.
- Branding – Choose your own branding in Sweetspot.
- Memberships – Set up and sell diversified memberships & partnerships.
- Point of Sale – Handle on sight payments with our POS, optimized for both hospitality and retail businesses.
- Vouchers & Promotions – Set up your gift cards, vouchers, and promotions.
- CRM – Keep track of & communicate with your customers.
I believe revenue management, automation, and optimization are the key principles that will help us to exceed our golfers’ and golf club guests’ expectations and to deliver hyper-personalized golf experiences.
Let me know – in the comments or by email: mikibreitner@gmail.com – if you have any questions about Sweetspot’s revenue management solution.
This article is brought to you by Sweetspot.