Hello golf stakeholders:
Welcome to the pre-US Open edition of the Pellucid Perspective. Beyond the Perspective facts and figures in each issue, our Publications subscribers and Golf Market Research Center (GMRC) have seen the May Essential 8 KPI scorecard covering: Golf Revenue, Rounds Played, Avg. Rate/Rd, Capacity Rounds, % Utilization, Golf Revenue-per-Available Round, Avg. Peak WE Greens Fee (rate card changes) and % Effective Greens Fee (discount levels and change); see below for links to “be in the know.”
Publisher Jim K. channels Larry Ellison’s business advice of always operating in a healthy state of paranoia looking at likely avenues to finding the next growth phase as we see some natural leveling of the post-COVID era. Among his 4 potential paths are acceleration of tee sheet optimization and better (beginner-level?) Customer Relationship Management (CRM). His interpretation is that golf is gradually returning to the pre-COVID dynamic of winning the battle for share-of-golfer so winners in the next cycle will get a 2nd chance at doing that proactively rather than randomly.
Contributing Editor Stuart Lindsay references the concept of enlightened self-interest (aiding industry growth for individual stakeholder benefit) and proposes that some of the industry association actions of late lack this understanding. Using the recent PGA of America turmoil, churn and priorities as an example, he suggests that a return to understanding the members’ everyday challenges as local ambassadors to golf is in order while their Private club professional members fight to disprove the old maxim, “You can please all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time but…you can’t please all the people all the time.”
See below for the headlines to each of our recurring sections from the regional May weather impact (nice national tailwind) to By-the-Numbers which provides the April and Year-to-Date results for Rounds (both periods up mid-single digits) and Utilization (off fractionally for both). We’ve already compiled the May golf operations performance scorecard “preview”, courtesy of our Golf Market Research Center (GMRC) early-responders, and the sneak peek suggests that Rounds will again be up, following but not exceeding the national weather gain (which will mean flat or slightly declining Utilization). 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).
DEMOGRAPHICS & GOLF
2 ’20 Census Update, Why “Shift Matters” to Golf
By Stuart Lindsay
STRANGE WEATHER WE’RE HAVING
7 Heat Doesn’t Appear to be Stifling Demand
By Jim Koppenhaver
COMINGS & GOINGS
10 5 Activities; one of (nearly) each type
WEATHER IMPACT
12 Aug GPH declines -12%, Year-to-Date gives back to near-neutral (+1%)
BY-THE-NUMBERS
14 Jul Utilization a big gain, Year-to-Date improves as rounds beat poor weather!
MARKET FOCUS
16 Philadelphia holding in Top 20 (#20), not making any ground though on leaders
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.
