2024 Visitor Fees UK & Ireland

[Wayne_Kozun]

It appears that supply and demand is also working in a perverse way in UK & Ireland courses as the demand for overseas play has apparently increased when clubs upped their fees.  A £30 course was deemed to be not worth playing but if the same course charged £150 then all of a sudden there was more interest.

[Matt Schoolfield]

Veblen goods behave this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

[Wayne_Kozun]

Veblen goods behave this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

Exactly - but most people don't understand the term.

[Thomas Dai]

Veblen goods behave this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

Not just courses. Golf is absolutely stacked full of Veblen goods.
Atb

[Ken Moum]

Veblen goods behave this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

Not just courses. Golf is absolutely stacked full of Veblen goods.
Atb

Case in point, Honma 5-star irons.


That are $5,000.00


EACH!

[Tony_Muldoon]

It appears that supply and demand is also working in a perverse way in UK & Ireland courses as the demand for overseas play has apparently increased when clubs upped their fees.  A £30 course was deemed to be not worth playing but if the same course charged £150 then all of a sudden there was more interest.

Wayne can you provide any evidence beyond "it appears"? 
I hear this all the time but I've yet to see any hard evidence. As others have stated many tourists buy a package and have no idea what each green fee is.

[Wayne_Kozun]

I have no evidence on this but I believe that this was mentioned in a blog posting by UK Golf Guy when he was talking about the increase in prices for some of the lesser known top 100 courses.
Here is a quote:  (source - https://www.ukgolfguy.com/golf-blog/2023-green-fees)

The tourists are back
Visitors from overseas, particularly the US, have come back with a vengeance. Golfers from across the world are flocking back to play our golf courses. And they usually don’t mind paying an extra £50 to play. Such is the cost of some of those trips, it just gets lost in the rounding.
One tour operator put it to me like this, ‘A lot of foreign visitors have decided since Covid they will do whatever it takes to come to play in the UK and Ireland. Hotels, transport and green fees are all going up but I barely have a single discussion about the overall cost, they just want to know they can get on the courses’.
I have talked before about the weird phenomenon where some clubs have increased their green fees considerably over recent years because overseas visitors believe it must be a better course if it’s so expensive!

[Mark Pearce]

It appears that supply and demand is also working in a perverse way in UK & Ireland courses as the demand for overseas play has apparently increased when clubs upped their fees.  A £30 course was deemed to be not worth playing but if the same course charged £150 then all of a sudden there was more interest.

Wayne can you provide any evidence beyond "it appears"? 
I hear this all the time but I've yet to see any hard evidence. As others have stated many tourists buy a package and have no idea what each green fee is.

Visitor numbers at both Crail and Elie have increased since fees went above £100.

[Wayne_Kozun]

Visitor numbers at both Crail and Elie have increased since fees went above £100.

How much was the increase - was it very significant?  Didn't some places go from like  £40 to over  £100?

[Mark Pearce]

Visitor numbers at both Crail and Elie have increased since fees went above £100.

How much was the increase - was it very significant?  Didn't some places go from like  £40 to over  £100?

I *think* £60-£120 at Crail, £80-£120 at Elie.  So significant.  And, to be fair, Elie has very limited visitor slots in the peak Summer anyway.

[Dan_Callahan]

Fee increases have had the opposite impact for me, but then I don't purchase pre-packaged trips. However, there are courses that I used to play because their low fees offset some of the premium clubs. I still enjoyed playing them, even though they clearly weren't at the same level. Now that those courses have doubled (maybe even tripled) their prices, there is no way I'm going back. Once the gap closed to about a $100 difference between some very average courses and a few of the really good ones, I'll just suck it up and play the really good ones more often. Charging me triple the price for an average course isn't going to suddenly convince me it's great. It'll just make me feel like I got ripped off.

[Craig Disher]

Visitor numbers at both Crail and Elie have increased since fees went above £100.

How much was the increase - was it very significant?  Didn't some places go from like  £40 to over  £100?

I *think* £60-£120 at Crail, £80-£120 at Elie.  So significant.  And, to be fair, Elie has very limited visitor slots in the peak Summer anyway.

Same at St. Enodoc. Now 150GBP and no decline in play. IMO, that's a bargain - about the same as a nice dinner at Rick Stein's seafood restaurant.

[Pierre_C]

Sunningdale member's guest is £65/round.

Sunningdale Old or New is £350 for either and £600 for both. Not sure the - very helpful - chart makes this particularly clear.

[Thomas Dai]

There seems to be an element of entitlement in this thread in relation to private members clubs.
Perhaps folks should consider themselves fortunate that so many private clubs are prepared irrespective of paying a fee, to let those who are not members or accompanied members guests onto their premises.
Would you let a group of folks you’ve never met before into your garden or backyard to thrash away at your manicured lawn and shrubs and enter your house?
Gratitude and respect rather than entitlement?
Atb

[Padraig Dooley]

Tony and Wayne, all the courses that have seen an increase in visitor play after increasing the fees, have seen so as the result of increased visitor traffic in the area and a lack of capacity in the more high profile courses, so the golfers need to go somewhere to fill their schedules.
If a low profile course in an area off the tourist trail increased their fees from a base of 30-50 pounds or euros to 300 they would lose all their business.
On the tourist trails most pay a package fee and don't know the individual price per course, this is the main driver behind the increase in prices.

It appears that supply and demand is also working in a perverse way in UK & Ireland courses as the demand for overseas play has apparently increased when clubs upped their fees.  A £30 course was deemed to be not worth playing but if the same course charged £150 then all of a sudden there was more interest.

Wayne can you provide any evidence beyond "it appears"? 
I hear this all the time but I've yet to see any hard evidence. As others have stated many tourists buy a package and have no idea what each green fee is.

[PCCraig]

Those $ are no doubt high.


But as someone going to Northern Ireland next month on a trip I'm not planning, but tagging along on, I'm not sure I really thought of the per round cost. It's mostly a cost for an overall experience. If I was making 2-3 overseas golf trips a year I would care more I suppose.

[Jerry Kluger]

I don't believe that the private clubs in the UK and Ireland are allowing visitor play out of the goodness of their hearts.  Yes, no doubt some would do just fine without the visitor revenue but they would have to significantly increase their member dues which is not necessarily something that every member can afford.  The same is true of overseas members who I would speculate by and large do not play enough to be a positive economic decision for them.  The private clubs must demonstrate to their members that allowing visitor play makes economic sense especially where member play becomes significantly restricted.

[V_Halyard]

Curious.
Do those of you that live in the GB&I see a notable increase in visits from groups originating in places other than U.S.?
I played with a Korean couple that was scheduled on All Bucket List names for 2 weeks solid.


They seemed to be traveling freelance sans a tour company and it was their second round of the day.

[Ben Sims]

We are in Machrihanish currently. There’s virtually no one here. We can play anywhere we want at any time. Second breakfast where we are the only people in the hotel. I suspect it will be much the same tomorrow. I repeat, it’s July on a top 100 in the world course and we can essentially treat it like our personal playground. I know this is remote but so are lots of places in the UK.


I’m not sure where all those people are that were on our full plane, but it isn’t Cruden Bay, Brora, or Machrihanish. I don’t think it has anything to do with pricing. I used to think golfers would gravitate to the good. But I think more and more that overseas visitors gravitate to the expensive. And in-country visitors and locals gravitate to the more value-oriented rounds of golf. It leaves many courses in-between in the pricing structure and they have to react accordingly.

[Tony_Muldoon]

We are in Machrihanish currently. There’s virtually no one here. We can play anywhere we want at any time. Second breakfast where we are the only people in the hotel. I suspect it will be much the same tomorrow. I repeat, it’s July on a top 100 in the world course and we can essentially treat it like our personal playground. I know this is remote but so are lots of places in the UK.


I’m not sure where all those people are that were on our full plane, but it isn’t Cruden Bay, Brora, or Machrihanish. I don’t think it has anything to do with pricing. I used to think golfers would gravitate to the good. But I think more and more that overseas visitors gravitate to the expensive. And in-country visitors and locals gravitate to the more value-oriented rounds of golf. It leaves many courses in-between in the pricing structure and they have to react accordingly.

Ben I also noticed last week that Dornoch was rammed, yet Brora and Cruden Bay had only the odd minibus. Cheaper still, Tain, had more visitors.

I think this has yet to play out and in the next few years some rates will have to drop, while the very top continue to escalate. My understanding of the Veblen Effect is that it's not just the price that needs to be high to appeal to some ones wallet. If you have a bucket list of 'top' courses, you might well be better playing it ASAP.

[Tony_Muldoon]

Tony and Wayne, all the courses that have seen an increase in visitor play after increasing the fees, have seen so as the result of increased visitor traffic in the area and a lack of capacity in the more high profile courses, so the golfers need to go somewhere to fill their schedules.
If a low profile course in an area off the tourist trail increased their fees from a base of 30-50 pounds or euros to 300 they would lose all their business.
On the tourist trails most pay a package fee and don't know the individual price per course, this is the main driver behind the increase in prices.

That feels right and it will take a recession to stop this jugernault.

[Sean_A]

We are in Machrihanish currently. There’s virtually no one here. We can play anywhere we want at any time. Second breakfast where we are the only people in the hotel. I suspect it will be much the same tomorrow. I repeat, it’s July on a top 100 in the world course and we can essentially treat it like our personal playground. I know this is remote but so are lots of places in the UK.


I’m not sure where all those people are that were on our full plane, but it isn’t Cruden Bay, Brora, or Machrihanish. I don’t think it has anything to do with pricing. I used to think golfers would gravitate to the good. But I think more and more that overseas visitors gravitate to the expensive. And in-country visitors and locals gravitate to the more value-oriented rounds of golf. It leaves many courses in-between in the pricing structure and they have to react accordingly.

Ben I also noticed last week that Dornoch was rammed, yet Brora and Cruden Bay had only the odd minibus. Cheaper still, Tain, had more visitors.

I think this has yet to play out and in the next few years some rates will have to drop, while the very top continue to escalate. My understanding of the Veblen Effect is that it's not just the price that needs to be high to appeal to some ones wallet. If you have a bucket list of 'top' courses, you might well be better playing it ASAP.

In my experience, with the exception of the odd Irish course, prices don’t drop. There may be more deals to be had, but rack rates don’t drop.

Just at Cruden Bay…it was steady busy…not rammed. North Berwick was rammed. Fraserburgh was nearly empty on a Sunday.

Ciao

[Thomas Dai]

An interesting calculation is the cost of the golf played on a trip vrs the overall cost of the same trip.
There have been significant rises in ancillary and related costs over the years plus the introduction of sneaky wee additions such as for example an extra fee for taking a hire car across the NI/RoI border.
atb

[Ira Fishman]

In my experience, with the exception of the odd Irish course, prices don’t drop. There may be more deals to be had, but rack rates don’t drop.

Just at Cruden Bay…it was steady busy…not rammed. North Berwick was rammed. Fraserburgh was nearly empty on a Sunday.

Ciao



Sean,


How did you like  Fraserburgh? We really enjoyed it last year. We had the course to ourselves (admittedly, a raw day). 100 pounds if I remember correctly.


Ira

[Niall C]

Ira,


I was on the trip and from memory the deal was 65 quid playing on the weekend. That might have been a group deal but still very good value in terms of what greenfees are now. A couple of years ago I'd have said it was just about right.


Niall