Dear Golf Industry Professional:
The Ryder Cup trainwreck is now behind us (although much of the “industry” golf media is still flogging that dead horse), the PGA TOUR is touting the beginning of the race to the ’19 FedEx Cup (seriously?) and, for those of us in the golf operations business, the northern climes move to Fall rates and trying to squeeze a few more rounds and dollars out of the golfer base before leaves and cold overtake the courses for another winter. Early October brought us Michael and another assault on golf courses in a slightly different part of the southeast US. We collectively can’t catch a break but we persevere and, what I love about this industry during a crisis, operators help fellow operators out.
This month’s lead story takes a humorous look at the latest women’s player development program, #inviteHER. Publisher Jim Koppenhaver gives a review of the program details, the fairly consistent impact of similar historical efforts and manages to tie it back at the end to the trajectory and implications of sharing this space in history with the #MeToo movement. For his take on what happens when these two hashtags collide, follow the link below for his opinion, seasoned to taste with a few historical facts on female player development:
In addition, the October issue covers the following topics, none of which you’ll find in any other industry trade publication (guaranteed, or your money back):
• Editor-in-Chief Jim Dunlap looks at how the increasing interest in a la carte services is making its way into the golf course operations world, led by multiple management companies who are adapting to the trend, changing organizationally to cater to this (still limited) audience and the success and learnings coming from completed assignments
• Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay outlines the “digital disconnect” between the promise and capabilities of cloud-based PoS services and remaining gaps in basic needs like comparative period reporting, day-of-week offsets year-to-year (so you’re comparing Mondays to Mondays not Monday this year to Sunday last year) and integrated weather to produce Utilization and Revenue-per-Available-Round (RevpAR) key metrics weekly
• Plus the monthly Industry Scorecard (the only integrated scorecard of multi-source performance indicators) including the September weather impact results (down unfortunately) and the August YtD Utilization (down marginally, rounds decline again against flat weather). We also chart the monthly timeseries for the year of Golf Playable Hours (including the Q3 summary) and Utilization while our Market Focus continues with the profile of Tampa, FL as this month’s Market Focus which registers as the 13th healthiest of the Top 25 US Golf Markets in our annual ranking.
We recognize and thank our continuing sponsors; KemperSports, Troon Golf, Bayer CropScience, EZLinks Golf. We’re also happy to welcome the agronomy management platform Turfkeeper.com to the advertiser fold. Distributed in the US by longtime industry colleague Jeff Blunden, Turfkeeper is a platform that provides control of and insight into all of the key elements of agronomy management, helping to create and deliver a more fully optimised turf operation. For all those service providers and suppliers to the golf industry out there with the latest-and-greatest to offer to the industry thought-leaders who read our monthly publication, might we suggest considering joining our merry little band through our most popular 12-month sponsorship program? (offered at an improved value relative to our entry-level six month sponsorship rate) Twelve-month sponsors also receive all Pellucid industry-standard reports (State of the Industry, Outside the Ropes, Monthly Weather Impact Tracking (Nat’l, Reg’l, Markets), Top 25 US Golf Markets Scorecard and National Golf Consumer Franchise Health Scorecard). Sponsorship provides monthly exposure to approximately 30K industry leaders and followers and associates your brand with Pellucid’s effort to expand intelligent thinking on today’s most challenging industry issues. For more “opportunistic” spenders, we might suggest one of our smaller-bite Ad Partner programs for those who may not be able to make a 6 or 12-month commitment (as short as 3 months are now available) or who may not need a half page or more exposure (quarter pages now available). If you’re interested in knowing more about sponsorship opportunities or are interested in a preview of our ad partner options, contact Editor-in-Chief Jim Dunlap (760-212-3714, jdgolfer@cox.net).
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 conversation, discussion and debate.
We also continue to spread the word on Pellucid’s next generation golf course database, the Internet Golf Course Database (IGDB) with partners Apparation LLC, Never-Search and GolfCourseRanking.com. While no database will ever be 100% accurate, we continue to be surprised at the quantity and range of inconsistencies in course directories out there as well as the fact that most of the major tee time providers and recommendation sites (like GolfAdvisor) are propagating these phantom facilities and errors 5-10 fold for people doing Google searches online. Talk about an “echo chamber”… For more information on our comprehensive database, updated quarterly and refreshed completely every 12 months (all 15K+ US courses), contact jim@pellucidcorp.com
As always, you can review and order any of Pellucid’s range of reports and services www.pellucidcorp.com. From the numbers and details of how our industry’s consumer base is changing at the national level to our individual facility-level services including weather impact (Cognilogic) and market analysis (Golf Local Market Analysis), we’ll keep you one step ahead of the competition in this continuing challenging industry landscape.