James
I think the mistake often made on here is thinking of UK clubs in terms of being a commercial enterprise and that all income comes without a cost. The argument goes that the club wouldn't be getting the full visitor fee anyway so why not take a fraction of that by way of a guest fee ? Well I'm not sure that is actually correct. I suspect the best person to comment on her, Adrian Stiff, might disagree with it as well. I also don't agree with the bit that it doesn't come without a cost. Ignoring the extra wear and tear on the course there is the point that it undermines the membership of the club. Why bother with becoming a member when all I need is an app ?
Niall
Of course you are right in that all clubs are run differently and some clubs are just happy to balance the books each year, some don't think of the other costs. Provided you have a rainy day fund (Covid) and put money aside for expensive things like Irrigation Systems which at say £300,000 and a 20 year life means £15,000 should go into a side-pot...its then fine to consider everything in the best interest of THE MEMBERS and if bringing guests for a peppercorn is desired then fine.
Commercially I break it down that say it costs £750,000 to run the golf course and with 25,000 rounds of golf it means your PPR bats out at £30 per game gets you back level.....as well all know if you sell anything for less than you buy you will go bankrupt.
The other side of 'being sensible' is not to undermine your membership pricing, the best golf courses trade at a high green fee price to membership costs, the very best UK clubs are still only say £1500 per year yet the green fee might be £200 for a single round, so they trade at a ratio of less than 10. This creates desire to want to belong.
If your membership is £900 per year and the club touts its charms at £15 on GolfNow or any ponce site then it does not create that desire to belong, trading at 60 times ratio is crazy, members will jump ship and pay as they go. Most members play 20-30 times. Clubs that trade their membership at 30 times higher the standard summer green fee are likely to go bust. 20 times is the preferred level with the lower the better.
And so guests fees come somewhere in the middle. That is up to the club if it sees £25 as worth having when it displays rack rate at £65 then something is not quite right, if it see's that bringing guests at a very low price 30% of rack rate as a members perk, then I think that is right. Silloth is a difficult one, we know the course is great, it just has one of the worst locations in England. In my opinion Silloth should have bought The Golf Hotel, it would pack out a 20 twin bedroomed hotel and pocket say £299 for a 2 night 3 round deal, it would probably nett twice what the club takes now.
If someone is already a member of a club then 'county card price' is there for everyone. What you need to eradicate is someone poncing into 1000greens or Duncan's group that is a non member, though it would seem if he is not a member he can't reciprocate so this should in theory be catered for at the moment, down the line he might not rejoin that top100 club but still retain his affiliation.
Like others are saying, this whole thing is not black and white. It just should not morph into a cheap avenue for golf so the clubs get robbed. Clubs need to keep the desire to play and you kinda do that by keeping the price up a bit and taking the view that an unused tee time is lost money so grab what you can smashes the integrity.