COVID and club memberships

[Rob Marshall]

So I got on the waiting list for a club in Florida in late 2017. I was number 327 on the list to start. After a year I moved up to 300. This was a club I was told would take years to get in to due to high demand. In 2019 they did some sort of restructuring and as of October 2019 I was 200. Today I found out I’ve moved up to 20. I asked the Director of Membership how I moved up so quickly and her response was “COVID Happened”.


My home club is booming. Rounds are way up. This makes no sense to me. Anyone else seen anything like this happening in other areas.

[John Kavanaugh]

Last week I was on the phone with my car dealership about a problem. I immediately said "Don't say it", I repeated myself at least three times and you know what he said. Covid. Yeah, Covid happened.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Interesting. Many of the clubs I know have gained in membership.

[Duncan Cheslett]

Could it be just as simple as they’ve increased the number of members they have at any one time? That’s a great way of reducing a waiting list and turning it into hard cash!

[Mark Pearce]

Anecdotally a lot of UK clubs have seen an increase in membership.  The Northumberland now has a waiting list for membership, for the first time in decades.

[Rob Marshall]

Could it be just as simple as they’ve increased the number of members they have at any one time? That’s a great way of reducing a waiting list and turning it into hard cash!

That was my thought and why I asked the question only to get Covid as an answer.

[A.G._Crockett]

Maybe it's useful to make a distinction between membership numbers and usage rates?  Though it might not explain such a huge change as this one, it's possible that current members are playing a LOT more golf because they aren't traveling, etc., but at the same time clubs are finding that many of the people on their waitlists are uncertain enough financially to opt not to take the membership. 


And in this particular case, if Rob Marshall had been waiting for three years, it seems possible that many of the people at the top of the list might have been there for many, many years and now have a completely different life situation, pandemic or not.

[Rob Marshall]

I was thinking the same thing A.G. It's not that 180 quit, many of the people on the list may have turned down the membership. But it's still a huge number when the normal change was 25 people per year. We're talking about a retirement area where demand has historically been very high.

[Jim Sherma]

Two anecdotal pieces here:

• Club that I hold a non-resident membership at has informed me of the following - rounds this year due to COVID have more than doubled - no new non-resident memberships are on offer - there are also some new restrictions on available tee times and how far in advance we can make tee times. I know that the rounds were up as a combination of COVID and a new member drive that I understand they had some success with. Not sure how this plays out next year assuming that I keep the membership active. The course definitely saw more wear and tear due to the amount of play based on the limited times I've played it this year.
• Friend's parents have been wintering in the Myrtle Beach area for years keeping a membership at a semi-private course near their place. They were told this year that there will be no memberships. Play has been up so much making the member's tee times more valuable to the club if sold ad hoc. It will be interesting to see what the long term cost of this will be if things return to normal and you've managed to screw over long time customers for sort term gains.

[Thomas Dai]

At my usual hangout membership numbers have risen significantly to the extent that there are comments that it's become difficult to secure a tee time. And with less daylight and usually poorer weather through the UK winter things are not likely to improve tee-time wise.
One question though, if Covid does hopefully disappear will membership numbers decline again? An unanswerable question maybe

atb

[Ryan Hillenbrand]

I inquired at 2 clubs in the South that offer national memberships. Both have a waiting list so long they're not even adding new people to it.


At the same time I've talked to snowbirds who said they're not planning on going south this winter until there is a Covid vaccine. I'm guessing since the stock market is still strong people don't feel the need to drop memberships even if they aren't using them.

[A.G._Crockett]

The takeaway from all of this is that we're just flat out in uncharted territory.  I don't think anybody would have necessarily expected a golf boom during a pandemic, but here we are.  And what happens to golf when the pandemic abates is anybody's guess, too.

[Tommy Williamsen]

I live in a little golf/ski resort. On a normal year we will take in about 30 new members. This year 77 families joined. There are few houses on the mt. for sale. Everyone in the city wanted a second home and they sheltered in place here throughout the summer. Some that work from home moved here permanently.

[Bill Gayne]

The upcoming holiday season or lack of one along with the missed business club and Rotary meetings that helped clubs get through the winter will make it a long winter for some clubs.

[Buck Wolter]

WSJ had a column on Zoom Boomtowns as people move to ski and resort towns enabled by WFH. Could metro clubs become the new destination clubs and Destination Clubs get many more local members.