Tough times in England

[Rich Goodale]

Tony, Mark et. al.

There is a silver lining in all this gloom, at least for me, in that this cold shower of economic reality will probably scupper the smouldering plans at both of my clubs to build new mega-clubhouses.  Even in the rosiest of scenarios 2-3 years ago, these plans were insane.  Now that their folly is increasingly exposed, both clubs can and should happily revert to the minimalist model that Sean, I and others advocate.

Rich

[Sean_A]

I keep hearing about all these pay and play options.  I can think of very few anywhere near where I live and all have clubs attached anyway unless they are true municipals.  Personally, I am not buying that pay and play has hindered clubs because clubs have always been part of the pay and play options which is one of the great aspects of GB&I clubs. Perhaps (but certainly not that I know of in my part of the world covering Brum to Worcester to Cheltenham) pay and play have undercut the clubs (or they have a more appealing atmosphere for the casual golfer?) and garnered business, but that is the fault of clubs, not pay and play joints.

Rich - the worrying thing is that I think a great many UK clubs are fairly lean and mean and those are the ones I think are in serious trouble.  Most don't have good courses as a great asset like the big guns do.  If the big guns get in trouble they can always buckle down and buck the recent trend of high green fees for fewer visitors.  I am convinced that the great and good could rake in loads more visitor cash if they wanted to - sort of an ace in the hole.  I am afraid the great unwashed don't really have that option to generate much difference in revenue.     

Ciao

[Adrian_Stiff]

In recessions things tend to revert back in time. The Artisan membership could reappear, staffing levels at golf clubs account for a great deal of the outgoings. I think clubs will survive provided they dont have huge bank borrowings or high rentals for their land, a lot of clubs have seen their rents grow 4 fold in a short time. Clubs may need to lose more staff and the members go out and do their bit, fairways cut once a week, greens every other day, big reduction in fertiliser, thats all in my phase 2 plan. Phase 3 includes sheep. Rates are high too, the government could help there and given all EGU clubs mandatory 80% relief rather than selected ones. Removal of Vat for private clubs would help. It is not a fair playing surface at the moment.
Golf will keep getting played but at a cheaper level.

[Rich Goodale]

Sean

The clubs which are on the "If it's Tuesday it must be Troon" rota are of course sustainable, but I don't think they can raise prices unthinkingly.  Where they can falter is if they don't adequately reinvest their cash flow in the course and/or divert too much of this cash to non-golf related projects, i.e. new clubhouses which cannot be justified by any sort of rational financial feasibility study.

As for the great unwashed mass of clubs, the only real attribute which they share is their diversity.  Those that have a strong and stable membership and a positive brand image will survive, particularly if they can find and exploit a niche in the golfing market.  As with most businesses, those which can create an attrractive ethos at either the high or low end can even prosper while those trapped in the middle will be increasingly vulnerable.  There are examples of each in the 15 clubs within a 15 mile radius of where I live.  (NB--the population in this catchment area is no more than 150,000 people, which raises other serious issues if you do the simple maths.....).

I am increasingly coming to the opinion that someone travelling into the future and landing in the Scotland of 2025 would very possibly say:

"Yes, Jim, it's golf alright, but not as we know it......"

Rich

[Niall C]

Rich - the worrying thing is that I think a great many UK clubs are fairly lean and mean and those are the ones I think are in serious trouble.  Most don't have good courses as a great asset like the big guns do.  If the big guns get in trouble they can always buckle down and buck the recent trend of high green fees for fewer visitors.  I am convinced that the great and good could rake in loads more visitor cash if they wanted to - sort of an ace in the hole.  I am afraid the great unwashed don't really have that option to generate much difference in revenue.     

Ciao

Sean,

I'm not sure that most clubs in the UK are that lean and mean. Most clubs here are members clubs and I think I would be right in saying that they get the majority of their income from members subscriptions. Any club that I have been a member of, and any club I that I know the level of subs, have all had their subs go up by a significant amount in the last 5/6 years.

Silloth has gone from £205 when I first joined to £350 this year while my old club Bothwell Castle has gone from c. £500 to c. £800 over the same period. What both clubs have in common is that they have spent relatively large sums on their clubhouses.

Let me ask you this, when you and your mates want to play an away day, does the quality of the clubhouse come into the equation when deciding which course you're going to play ?

Niall

[Rich Goodale]

Let me ask you this, when you and your mates want to play an away day, does the quality of the clubhouse come into the equation when deciding which course you're going to play ?

Niall

Sean, Niall and others

I would love to hear answers on this as it is directly rlevant to the "new clubhouse" proposals at my two clubs.  In both cases the committee/council seems to believe so and yet in my experience (particularly in my occasional management of golf outings) the quality of the clubhouse and other facilities is far less important than the quality of the golf.

What think ye?

Rich

PS--Sean.  Did the fact that we had to change in the upstairs loo at Hoylake prior to our dinner there after the day at the Open detract significantly from the experience?

j-p p

[Andrew Mitchell]

Just read this thread for the first time - it makes very depressing reading but much of it rings very true.

At my club we have made a small profit in 2008 and have money in the Bank.  However we have had 39 members resign or suspend their membership for 2009, which reduces our income by around £30,000. 

As a traditional members club the membership is our main source of income but there is a limit to what you can extract/persuade them to pay.  We also operate a card system for the bar but there is no prepaid amount.  I have mentioned introducing a prepaid amount (say £50 as a starting point) on a number of occasions in committee over the last couple of years.  On each occasion I have been told that this would need the approval of the members at the AGM, that 40% of the membership are "car park members" who have not activated their cards, and that sufficient of them would turn up at an AGM to oppose it.

We also have a halfway house but it is only open on invitation and open days.  We've tried opening it at weekends but members complain that it slows the round down too much! 

We therefore have to try and increase income from visitors and non-members.  There are 3 pay & play facilities in the vicinity, and probably 5 other clubs in a five mile radius of a similar standard to us.  If we increase green fees significantly above those other clubs we will lose the casual visitor and some of the visiting parties.

We have invested funds in recent years on both the course and the clubhouse.  These are beginning to pay dividends as both visiting parties and clubhouse bookings (wedding reception, birthday parties etc) are on the up.  We then try to maximise these by increasing bar prices to visitors.

We are by no means alone.  All clubs in our area are reporting reducing membership numbers.  Some are no doubt moving around to find the best deal with no joining fee to deter them.  But on the whole there is a dwindling number of golfers who want to be club members.  I suspect that this is something not unique to West Yorkshire.

[Rich Goodale]

Good points, Andrew, but I'm not sure about the weddings/birthday parties "solution."

We do this at my local club, and it brings in some dosh, but after a few times of calling up to book dinner when such an event is on and being told you have to eat in the dirty bar, you start moving the club down the priority list when looking for a place to dine out.  I know it is only tangentially relevant, but the long, slow and painful decline of the Burghfield House Hotel in Dornoch began when they started booking wedding parties over the summer.  When you start spoiling the experiences of members (or long term hotel guests) to satisfy transient spendthrifts, you are on the road to perdition.  In the vernacular, it is a "jump the shark" moment, and very sad to see.

Rich

[Andrew Mitchell]

Rich
I don't see the weddings and birthday parties as an all encompassing solution but when you can't convince 40% of the membership to come in the clubhouse and buy a drink you have to look elsewhere to utilise one of your two money raising assets.

As the clubhouse is situated away from immediate centres of population, and there are several restaurants catering to all tastes in the populated areas where the bulk of the membership lives, there is no Saturday evening dining culture at the club.  We always keep one Saturday evening free a month for a members social function and these are generally well supported, usually of course by the same relatively small percentage of the membership.

[Mark Chaplin]

Niall - Over the past 18 months we spent £1m on our clubhouse renewing toilets, showers, putting in a lift, etc, etc. It needed doing as the old facilities were literally falling down however in all my time at golf clubs I've never heard anyone join or leave a club over the quality of the showers or urinals.

At the end of the day a club lives and dies by the quality of the golf links.

[Marty Bonnar]

Here's one well-known(ish) place bucking the trend:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/7858493.stm

£40m? Of course the PROPERTY portion of the proposal is key. What a pity but sadly rather predictable and maybe the ONLY way forward currently for UK golf.

FBD.