The Pellucid Perspective - September 2016 - 6

GOLF MARKETING of "lapsed" and "interested in learning" golfers identified by the NGF and other industry surveyors. "The industry needs to reposition golf as not just a large block of time," Brugger said, "but golf is currently unequipped to fight the time challenge with the traditional approaches to 4-5 hours of time for a full round of golf. The 'short format' golf game brings a lot more of today's values and minds into the game." John Carson, general manager at Hunter Ranch Golf Club in Paso Robles, CA, is one of the early adopters of the Quick. golf program, having installed the system earlier this month. He feels, and successfully convinced his owner to share his belief that 6 The Pellucid PersPecTive Quick.golf 's pay-per-hole program will not only generate additional revenue during times when the first tee is normally vacant, but also attract new customers to his facility who not only want to get in a few quick holes but may come back for a full round in the future after sampling the course. "It's incremental revenue," Carson said. "It fits well with the thinking of young people today who don't necessarily think they have 4-5 hours on the weekend to play golf. Also, we think we'll get a lot of new people who've never played here before." It will come as no surprise to readers of this publication that course operators are generally slow to adopt new technology or operating strategies, and are frequently inclined to look for possible flaws in new concepts that make their already challenging jobs more difficult. Carson said that sometimes operators need to put those concerns aside and look at the potential positives instead. "Once we get past that 'We can't do that because...' reaction, hopefully we can try something new," Carson said. "Some operators will always be worried about people gaming the system, but in this case, the positives outweigh the negatives." (It should be noted that the Quick.golf system has some built-in protections for courses and deterrents for anyone playing more holes than they claim and pay for, but like any similar concern, it's essentially found money for the course and if someone plays some free golf, it didn't cost the course any more to provide it). As far as concerns that any new system and technology brings with it the onus of having to train staff how to use it, Carson said the Quick.golf app is relatively worry-free. Customers have already downloaded the app to their mobile devices, click on it to see when Quick.golf is available on the day they want to play, and head for the course. When they finish playing, they log the number of holes they played and the per-hole fee is automatically charged to the credit card in their Quick.golf file. Carson said the Quick.golf app is relatively worry-free, and took just 15 minutes to set up at his course."I'll tell you one thing, it's a lot easier than our POS system, I can guarantee that," he said. Time will tell, but to some folks wrestling with the "takes too much time" barrier, perhaps the time is now for less time. n September 2016 http://Quick.golf http://Quick.golf http://Quick.golf http://Quick.golf http://Quick.golf http://Quick.golf http://Quick.golf http://www.kempersports.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - September 2016