]Duncan - Is that a good thing do you think for the long term? Let's say the golf cub "HAD" a £1000 joining fee but now its zero, if the cub turns tound 30 members in 30 members out every year, they have just dropped £30,000. Yes you can argue "but we won't replace the 30 that left if we had a JF, they would join XYZ cub next door". Of course its the first stages of death spiral.
The consumer is now a member of a golf club and has not committed his £1000, at the first sign of a better deal he's off to save a farthing, he has not lost his £1000 that bound him to committment.
I wasn't making a case for the disappearance of joining fees being either a good or a bad thing; simply pointing out the situation as it now is.
The fact is that in mine and Mark's area of the country at least, joining fees are no longer charged at any but the more 'exclusive' clubs in the more affluent locations. Clubs for whom membership still holds some social 'cachet' are able to charge joining fees; the majority - many of whom have just as good if not superior courses - are not.
The perfect example;
http://www.cavendishgolfclub.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=59&Itemid=82I am sure that the situation is little different in other areas of the country.
Surely then, in the absence of a joining fee ensuring a member's commitment and loyalty, clubs will simply have to work harder to retain members by ensuring the best golfing and general membership experience possible. This is how the rest of the commercial world works; customers' loyalty must be earned through consistently good service and value for money. Those businesses able to do this thrive; those that can't fall by the wayside. Why should the business of running a golf club be any different?
Your 'death spiral' example above ignores an important point. Many people (myself included) would not have joined a golf club at all if a joining fee of £1000 or more had been demanded. I would simply have remained a nomadic player and treated golf as an occasional hobby to be fitted in around the rest of my activities. Joining a club has put it at the very centre of my life. Joining fees are a deterrent to people taking up the game seriously - their disappearance should allow the general pool of club golfers to increase, hopefully enabling more clubs to survive rather than less.
Golf has suffered long enough as being viewed generally as a past-time pursued mainly by wealthy professionals and businessmen. Quite clearly that particular demographic is no longer sufficient to ensure the viability of every golf club and course in the country, so golf must become more democratic and market itself to a wider public...
...a public which by and large will be unable or unwilling to pay a joining fee of say £1000 on top of annual fees of £850.
£850 per year is probably doable for the average bloke - it is the £1000 joining fee that isn't. More importantly, it is impossible to justify to his wife!
The huge number of potential club golfers who fall into this category are very possibly the future of mainstream golf clubs in the UK.
The old business model of the local golf club having a waiting list for membership of people desperate to storm the citadel of social acceptance in exchange for a hefty joining fee and them maybe enjoying the odd round of golf as a bonus is gone - except perhaps in Wilmslow and Prestbury!
Many factors are at play in this; less respect for the established 'social order', more opportunities to play golf without the commitment of club membership, a decline in the popularity of golf in general, the ongoing financial situation in general, etc, etc.
If golf clubs are going to survive - let alone thrive - they are going to have to come to terms with these factors, and adjust their business models accordingly. Living in the past is the true start to the 'death spiral'.