Pellucid Corp.: Publishes July’s Pellucid Perspective
Dear Golf Industry Professional:
Well, the first half of the calendar year is now in the books and the most appropriate summary is probably, “It could have been worse.” Rather than complain about things that didn’t go our way in the 1st half, reasoned readers are taking stock of what worked in the first half (using Utilization vs. Rounds to determine how much of the decline (if any) they “owned” in marketing and customer experience) and looking ahead at spend levels in the back half of the year to determine how much they need to trim to make up for rounds-related profit shortfalls.
This month’s lead story by Publisher Jim Koppenhaver discusses an ambitious redevelopment effort in Salt Lake City to re-open a previously municipal-owned golf course using a relatively unique public-private partnership approach. It doesn’t hurt that it’s getting bundled with a major renovation of the neighboring SLC airport complex and it appears at this juncture that it’s “on the rails” for a targeted 2020 re-launch. As more munis confront the continuing operational losses of their golf facilities (or portfolios) and with the looming CapEx “monster” that we outlined in last month’s issue, we anticipate that the public-private ownership model is something that will gain momentum and SLC could be one of the earlier test cases. For Jim’s take, read the current issue:
In addition, the July issue covers the following topics, none of which you’ll find in any other industry trade publication, guaranteed:
• Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay continues to beat the drum for the industry to put more focus on the merits of match play golf to attract new golfers, re-energize lapsed golfers and increase involvement of existing low-frequency participants. He outlines a personal anecdote relating to how his son is coming back to golf in mid-career and how match play has allowed the father-son team to capture some office bragging rights and increase his son’s enthusiasm for playing more often which is begetting a higher skill level (which begets even higher frequency, the virtuous cycle).
• We also unveil a new section this month titled, “Golf Landscape Changes” which provides a summary (not exhaustive of comprehensive) of openings, closures, redevelopments and transactions reported across the industry in the last 30 days. Our intent is to summarize and provide thumbnail sketches of these various events which we believe will make trends more recognizable as well as be more convenient for our readers than daily scanning of the various media stories or setting up and monitoring Google alerts on various golf-related topics. We’re open to your feedback on whether it’s helpful and, if so, how we could improve it.
• Editor-in-Chief Jim Dunlap is in post-surgery recovery so we wish him a speedy and complete recovery and look forward to his wit and wisdom gracing and guiding the August issue.
• Plus the monthly Industry Scorecard (the only integrated scorecard of multi-source performance indicators) including the June weather impact results (flat) and the May YtD Utilization (also flat, both weather and rounds up). We also chart the monthly timeseries for the year of Golf Playable Hours and Utilization while our Market Focus continues with the profile of Pittsburgh, PA as this month’s Market Focus which registers as the 24th healthiest of the Top 25 US Golf Markets in our annual ranking.
We recognize and thank our continuing sponsors; KemperSports, Troon Golf, Bayer CropScience and EZLinks Golf. 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 want to bring to your attention Pellucid’s next generation golf course database, the Internet Golf Course Database (IGDB) with partners Apparation LLC, Never-Search and GolfCourseRanking.com. We’ve just completed a manual review of thousands of facilities against the industry’s legacy facility database provider and found hundreds of discrepancies in the existence of facilities (they’re missing quite a few of the Learning & Practice facilities across the US & they’re still carrying 100+ closed facilities), address errors and facility name errors. While no database will ever be 100% accurate, we were surprised at the quantity and range of inconsistencies 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 at 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.
