[Duncan Cheslett]

I have considered Conwy for my trip to Buda next September. If I join there as a second club member I assume I can bring my traveling golfer as a guest of a member.


Can I get a deal at other clubs while there as a member of a UK club?

Second club members can sign in guests at the reduced members’ rate.


Conwy has some terrific reciprocal arrangements with other high quality clubs such as Delamere Forest, St Anne’s Old Links, and Beau Desert. Unfortunately these are not available (officially) to Second club members. Depending on how things go I might even consider moving my main membership to Conwy specifically to access these deals.


There is also an Overseas Membership, but it works out a little more expensive than Second club.


If the dates work I’d be delighted to host you and your buddy at Conwy pre BUDA.

[Mark Pearce]

Weird that they don't let you play comps....

[Duncan Cheslett]

Weird that they don't let you play comps....

I get the impression that Saturday comps are fully subscribed anyway. Conwy has around 700 full members and 300 Second Club members. When you consider that even in the middle of summer the most golfers you can possibly get out in 3 balls in a day is 200 you can see the potential problem.


 

[Mark Pearce]

Weird that they don't let you play comps....

I get the impression that Saturday comps are fully subscribed anyway. Conwy has around 700 full members and 300 Second Club members. When you consider that even in the middle of summer the most golfers you can possibly get out in 3 balls in a day is 200 you can see the potential problem.

So why the need for this?  Doesn't sound as if they should be struggling financially.  For less than 50% more than this, I can be a full member at Crail.

[mike_malone]

I have considered Conwy for my trip to Buda next September. If I join there as a second club member I assume I can bring my traveling golfer as a guest of a member.


Can I get a deal at other clubs while there as a member of a UK club?

Second club members can sign in guests at the reduced members’ rate.


Conwy has some terrific reciprocal arrangements with other high quality clubs such as Delamere Forest, St Anne’s Old Links, and Beau Desert. Unfortunately these are not available (officially) to Second club members. Depending on how things go I might even consider moving my main membership to Conwy specifically to access these deals.


There is also an Overseas Membership, but it works out a little more expensive than Second club.


If the dates work I’d be delighted to host you and your buddy at Conwy pre BUDA.

Great.

[Ulrich Mayring]

To be honest, they should sell discounted greenfees, but not some bureaucratic nightmare and call it membership. Being a member at a club means something more than not paying a greenfee. First and foremost it means the freedom to walk about and do as you wish in "your" club. It means "owning" the experience - being one of the people making it for others. As a member I donate time to the club, as a guest I just play and say thank you and leave.

I am sympathetic to a club making offers to generate additional income. Reduce your greenfee ridiculously in off-peak times. Pair up guests with members in peak times. Whatever it takes, but don't devalue membership by selling a cheaper version without the spirit of membership.

Ulrich

[Jon Wiggett]

To be honest, they should sell discounted greenfees, but not some bureaucratic nightmare and call it membership. Being a member at a club means something more than not paying a greenfee. First and foremost it means the freedom to walk about and do as you wish in "your" club. It means "owning" the experience - being one of the people making it for others. As a member I donate time to the club, as a guest I just play and say thank you and leave.

I am sympathetic to a club making offers to generate additional income. Reduce your greenfee ridiculously in off-peak times. Pair up guests with members in peak times. Whatever it takes, but don't devalue membership by selling a cheaper version without the spirit of membership.

Ulrich

Ulrich,


as a greenfee payer you are in effect a member for that day. What you describe is exactly what has gotten so many clubs in the UK into trouble. Doing ridiculously low greenfees combined with a players who do not us the clubhouse but just leave has been the recipe for financial ruin for many clubs.


In the UK the answer for the vast majority of clubs is to increase and retain membership numbers combined with said members using the clubhouse regularly.

[Mark Chaplin]

Ignoring the membership models at some proprietary clubs, at a private member club all members should be equal. Your sub reflects the distance you travel and therefore the likely number of times you can play in a year. Conwy appear to be offering a bundled greenfee deal with signing in privileges, not membership of a club.

[Sean_A]

I am a country member of two clubs. One offers me all the rights and privileges of full membership. I always thought it odd that I have voting rights when I pay half the sub.

Ciao

[Duncan Cheslett]

To be honest, they should sell discounted greenfees, but not some bureaucratic nightmare and call it membership. Being a member at a club means something more than not paying a greenfee. First and foremost it means the freedom to walk about and do as you wish in "your" club. It means "owning" the experience - being one of the people making it for others. As a member I donate time to the club, as a guest I just play and say thank you and leave.

I am sympathetic to a club making offers to generate additional income. Reduce your greenfee ridiculously in off-peak times. Pair up guests with members in peak times. Whatever it takes, but don't devalue membership by selling a cheaper version without the spirit of membership.

Ulrich

I consider your logic flawed.


A club like Conwy (and Cavendish for that matter) relies to a large extent on visitor play during the main season. It is in the prime holiday area for millions of people from Greater Manchester and Merseyside. The summer green fee is £50 per round and it is in the club's interest to keep it that level - or to increase it if at all possible. Discounting green fees is a sure way to financial disaster as the perceived value of a round of golf at that course drops to the discounted level.


Most visitors to UK clubs go as part of a society or an organised event - not as casual green fee payers. Block bookings of 20 or more visitors obviously get a better deal than Joe Bloggs and his mate rocking up at the Pro's shop. Society visitors tend to judge the value of their experience in relation to the saving they are making on the normal green fee. Another reason for keeping green fees at a high level. It is all about the perception of value and not demeaning the perceived value of a round of golf at one's course.


For my £430 per year I am a member at Conwy and can play the course as often as I like. I am welcome to join other members in their regular "roll-up" games and I can sign in visitors at members' guest rates. The only constraints are that I cannot play in Saturday competitions and I have no vote at general meetings. I have no interest in either.


In the last ten years I have played Conwy once - as a guest of Mark Rowlinson a few years ago. Conwy has therefore earned around £20 from me in ten years - £2 per year. This year they will earn £430 from me at no extra cost to the club. They are not losing appreciable green fee income from me because it is unlikely that I would pay a green fee more than once or twice in the next ten years.


The arrangement therefore, is good for me in that I now have a choice of club to visit through the week with a guaranteed game and convivial company when I get there. It is also good for Conwy in that they have my £430 in exchange for a plastic membership card costing maybe a quid. They have several hundred second club members like me so the numbers add up immensely.


In an ironic twist Cavendish today has 18 holes open - 3 on temporary greens due to very wet conditions.

Links course Conwy is waterlogged and closed completely!

[Ulrich Mayring]

Duncan,

if you think discounted greenfees are problematic, then how can a discounted flat rate be good? That's effectively what they gave you.

To me membership has a social meaning plus any number of intangibles that make me feel home. Certainly, if there is a long laundry list of interdictions this would not make me feel like I belong.

We do have this "second club" model in Germany as well. It is meant for people, who move away from their hometown for job reasons. They might still like to keep their old membership for social reasons and for a nostalgic round or two when they visit back home. But they can't justify paying full, since they're already paying full at their new location, where they play most of their golf. Keeping a long-standing and valuable member is the idea, it would be a counter-productive to strip this person of social or other perks.

Ulrich

[Sean_A]

Ulrich

Don't forget, links generally have half the population to draw membership from compared to inland courses.  Country membership is a very long standing vehicle to fill membership roles.  Most accept they will not be nearly as socially active compared to a local membership.  The system works very well...as is obviously the case because most clubs offer country membership at reduced cost.

Ciao

[Duncan Cheslett]

Sean makes an excellent point.

Many links courses are located in areas of very low population anyway, compounded by half their immediate catchment area being ocean!

When these old links courses were first built in the 19th century, they generally relied on the railways bringing members and visitors from the cities where they lived to the coast where they played golf. Inland golf wasn't yet even really a thing. To this day few links courses - particularly the more remote ones - manage to fill their membership ranks from local residents.

Country membership - usually with some restriction on the distance one lives from the club - is an age-old tradition which has long been embraced by many such golf clubs to boost their rolls. It generally does not offer all the benefits of full membership but comes at a heavily discounted price tag.

In contrast, particularly remote links clubs often simply have one class of membership at a very low price in relation to the daily green fee to appeal to locals and distant members alike. Silloth and Harlech are good examples of this. There are many in Scotland. The visitors' green fee however, always remains as high as the market will bear - in some cases eye-wateringly high!

Second club membership is simply a repackaged form of Country membership, and appears to work well for certain clubs. It offers a far greater certainty of future income than reliance on green fees.

From a member's point of view, I feel no less sense of "belonging" through not being able to play in Saturday competitions or to have a vote in the AGM I am unlikely to attend anyway. For all that I have my home club.


 

[Jon Wiggett]

Duncan,

if you think discounted greenfees are problematic, then how can a discounted flat rate be good? That's effectively what they gave you.

To me membership has a social meaning plus any number of intangibles that make me feel home. Certainly, if there is a long laundry list of interdictions this would not make me feel like I belong.

Ulrich,


because discounted greenfees cause people to switch away from paying the standard rate to paying the discounted rate but do not attract many new daily fee players so you end up with a substantial nett loss on income.


The 'flat rate' as you call it encourages people who might play two or three times a year to actually return multiple times. It also give the feeling of being a member of the club and usually leads to additional spending in the clubhouse. So it leads to a nett increase in income.

[Ulrich Mayring]

Interesting. There are a lot of clubs here, where the greenfee is very expensive, so I never go there. I would like to play once or twice a year though. These would be rounds where I would usually play my home course. But if it is so expensive I rather settle for my home course, which is a very good course in its own right.


So the clubs are definitely losing money against those people who would occasionally change it up.


Ulrich

[Jon Wiggett]

Interesting. There are a lot of clubs here, where the greenfee is very expensive, so I never go there. I would like to play once or twice a year though. These would be rounds where I would usually play my home course. But if it is so expensive I rather settle for my home course, which is a very good course in its own right.


So the clubs are definitely losing money against those people who would occasionally change it up.


Ulrich

Ulrich,


how many clubs charging £150+ are struggling? One of the main reasons why so many second/third tier clubs are struggling is because they have allowed their greenfee price to be dumped and so have cheapened the product they sell to a point where it is not financially sustainable. The clubs which have ultra low greenfee offers are not gaining turnover but losing it.

[Ulrich Mayring]

Well, I'll have to defer to your knowledge in this area. I can only speak for myself and perhaps some golfers I know - it seems we are exceptions then. But we're sure paying a lot of greenfees every year - I struggle to believe that's uninteresting business.

Ulrich

[Jon Wiggett]

Ulrich,


so if a club's standard rate is £60 but you can get it on occasion at £15 at a time which is convenient to you are you still going to go and pay a £60 greenfee? Most people will go for the £15 slot. Then because it is just £15 are you now going to go and play the course on 4 occasions especially as the other courses in the area of similar standing and interest are also offering the same deal? Again, most people will play somewhere else meaning instead of £60 the club has made just £15.

[Duncan Cheslett]

The Conwy/Llandudno area is very popular as a golfing destination for those from the Manchester and Merseyside areas. Accommodation is readily available and there are 3 or 4 very good links courses.


Conwy GC is indisputably the best of the local courses and its green fee commensurately the highest at £65 per round during the summer. The vast majority of visitors to Conwy are one-off players who will happily pay the green fee as part of a golfing trip or family holiday once every few years. The keenest will make an annual trip to the area. Why would the club compromise this valuable source of income by lowering the green fee?


Then you have the many people from NW England who have holiday homes or caravans in the area and visit on a regular basis. Some of these will become full members of the club but many will already be members of clubs in their home town for competition and handicap purposes. Rather than shift allegiance entirely the ability to play unlimited social golf while at their second home is clearly an attractive proposition.  There is no way that these guys are going to pay £65 a round multiple times per year, so the revenue that the club derives from second club membership is new income, not at the expense of lost green fee income.


Then there are people like me, who will happily pay £440 pa to be able to play a first class links course 90 minutes from home maybe 15-20 times a year as an alternative to my regular club. Again, the revenue gained by the club is not at the expense of green fee income, as at £65 I would be unlikely to play the course more than once every few years. If I'm paying upwards of £30-40 a round, I'd rather spread my play around multiple courses.




A golf club's published green fee is a powerful statement of the club's financial health, its position in the local pecking order, and is generally perceived as an indication of the quality of the course and general experience.


A high green fee relative to annual membership subscription will also drive new members to the club and generate goodwill among existing members. Membership must be seen as good value for money. As soon as it becomes better value for golfers to pay a green fee rather than an annual subscription a club will hemorrhage members and struggle to attract new ones. When members paying upwards of £1000 per year see visitors paying £15 a round it pisses them off. And so it should!


It is interesting to look at the green fees at the other Conwy/Llandudno clubs. North Wales and Maesdu appear to have dramatically increased their summer rates to bring them more in line with Conwy. This is heartening to see. In the Manchester area the reverse has been happening for years as clubs join in the race to the bottom offering ridiculously low green fees desperately to attract a small pool of local nomadic golfers. Many long established clubs are now in jeopardy as a result.

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