Greetings golf stakeholders:
Welcome to the October edition of the Perspective which marks our 121st published issue (10 years, 1 month) of following the industry and providing unique facts and opinions on its health and trends. Stuart Lindsay headlines this month relaying a project-in-progress with a facility client who needs some quantitative and moral support regarding pandemic pricing as it relates to municipal residents and non-residents. In the current environment of heightened demand, what do you do when your discounted customers (residents) want preferential treatment for tee times? Stuart walks you through the math and the logic of our client standing their ground to protect their revenue line as well as hewing to a strategy that will hold up in the post-pandemic world as well: The Pellucid Perspective – October 2020
In addition, our October dose of edutainment features the following analyses and professional opinions:
- Publisher Jim K. presents an additional “real world” study of why the industry’s lack of market-level performance tracking and benchmarking is handicapping our ability to “ride the wave” to its fullest. After years of trying to assemble a coalition of the willing in any single market to contribute rounds and golf revenue to show what benchmarking would reveal, he was finally able to get a sampling of courses for Pellucid’s hometown market of Chicago for the years ’19 and ’20 by month so he puts those through their paces to show what happened during COVID across the measures of rounds, golf revenue, Utilization and RevpAR. There are some things in there that you didn’t know, guaranteed…
- Stuart also revisits the topic of “Are you selling golf at below cost and, if so, stop it!” This was an offshoot of the headline article’s project where we were able to show our client mathematically that giving tee time preference to residents was basically just signing on to lose more money. Funny how people’s perceptions change when you bring facts and simply provide the underlying math vs. the emotional argument of “We’re entitled to this!”
- Plus the monthly Industry Scorecard (the only integrated scorecard of multi-source performance indicators) including the September weather impact results (slight dip) and August YtD Utilization (way up again). We also chart the monthly timeseries for the year of Golf Playable Hours and Utilization while our Market Focus this month continues through our most recent Top 25 list; working our way up from the bottom we visit Pittsburgh, PA St. occupying the 24th spot in the recently-updated scorecard and ranking. Rounding out the issue, our Comings & Goings section catalogues, classifies and comments on 16 activities (a continued trickle) hitting our radar in the past month with Transactions and For Sales leading the way with 10 activities combined.
- As a reminder, Pellucid recently introduced our Cognilogic Foresight product, Golf Playable Hours/Capacity Rounds forecast 60 days out, which can be ordered here at a one-time cost of $150. As we finalize our annual subscription access and pricing, for a limited time all one-time report fees will be credited back to subscriptions.
We recognize and thank our continuing sponsors; Troon Golf, GOLFNOW and KemperSports for their continued support of intelligent dialogue on key industry issues and health metrics tracking. 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, National Golf Consumer Franchise Health Scorecard and US Golf Supply on Sale report). 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 our ad partner options, contact Publisher Jim Koppenhaver (847.808.7651, jim@pellucidcorp.com).
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 (join our email list) 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 which now offers annual subscriptions for <$2.5K (that’s a compelling value!). IGDB now powers Pellucid’s Golf Local Market Analyzer and the Top 25 US Golf Markets Scorecard and has added functionality to our project work like being able to tally and profile course closures within key US markets over time. For more information on our comprehensive database, updated quarterly and refreshed completely every 9 months (all 15K+ US courses), email support@theigdb.com.
