Hello golf stakeholders:
What a Rory-coaster ride that was on Sunday, wasn’t it? That drive on 18 should make all us average amateurs smile as we often end up playing our 2nd shots from those places (but…not making bogey from there on the 18th hole at Augusta with a Sunday pin placement). Let’s return now though to our domain which is the industry (vs. the media sector) of golf.
Publisher Jim K. leads with what’s likely to be a lively letters-to-the-editor debate on whether switching to 100% pre-pay for individual facilities is a wise/financially sound decision in today’s environment. With courses running ~70% Utilization and pricing power, no/short-shows take a bite out of revenue potential (particularly if in excess of 5% and/or weekend “offenders”). He outlines the pros and cons on the “qualitative” element of how it may impact customer relations as well as (of course) running the numbers for an example situation of a Pellucid-client, Chicago suburban course who wrestled with and ultimately adopted it.
Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay geeks out this month on the dizzying array of statistics and types of analyses that are (slowly) permeating the industry. Is Moneyball coming to golf operations? Not just yet but the data layer is being assembled and from that we’ll see if golf can muster up Moneyball Lite in the near future. If so, it’ll be interesting to see which owner/operators (management companies?) become Billy Beane and what metrics will emerge as revolutionary in parallel to On-base Percentage, Slugging Percentage and OPS (combination of the two). We’re betting that RevpAR and Utilization will be near the top.
See below for the headlines to each of our recurring sections from the regional March weather impact (nationally neutral) to By-the-Numbers which provides the February and Year-to-Date results for Rounds (up modestly and up double-digits respectively) and Utilization (up as rounds gain beat neutral weather). We’ve already compiled the March golf operations performance scorecard “preview”, courtesy of our Golf Market Research Center (GMRC) early-responders, and the sneak peek suggests that Rounds will be up, slightly exceeding the flat national weather, which would produce a second consecutive month of Utilization gain. If you want to know those numbers on a regular basis, you can either participate in GMRC (course operators) or sign up for a Publications Membership (everyone else).
REVENUE MANAGEMENT
2 Is Pre-pay the (Best/Only) Way? By Jim Koppenhaver
DATA & ANALYSIS
6 Turning Data into Actionable Insights – Coming to Golf
By Stuart Lindsay
COMINGS & GOINGS
10 Wide variety of activities (13 tracked); Transactions, Opens and Closes (oh my!)
WEATHER IMPACT
12 Mar. registers nationally-neutral amidst regional variation
BY-THE-NUMBERS
14 Feb. posts Utilization gain as rounds beat flat weather
MARKET FOCUS
16 Denver, CO weighs in at #23 anchored by abundant Value golf
If you know of associates who would benefit from the topics and insights covered in this issue, feel free to forward this email and encourage them to register on the Pellucid website (http://www.pellucidcorp.com/news/elist) to join the discussion and healthy debate.
