The Pellucid Perspective - January 2016 - (Page 15)
THE LAST WORD
Braving the third party tee
time wilderness
A
s the new year dawns, one issue facing the golf industry will continue
to be found in the "hot button"
category. As course operators continue to
battle the golf course supply/golfer demand curve and find ways to profitably
fill available tee times, the productive use
of third party online tee time marketing partners remains a source of frustration and confusion. The NGCOA and
PGA of America have launched a stab
at creating some rules on that contentious battlefield with their Golf USA Tee
Time Coalition which, while not having
enforcement power, may at least be able
to show owners and operators which third
party tee time marketers are playing by
the "rules" and which aren't. At that point,
operators may still opt to do business with
those who didn't make the compliance
list, but at least they'll know what they're
in for, and perhaps have some points for
discussion to improve their deal.
Fairly or not, the company who almost
invariably comes first to mind in these
discussions is GolfNow. The industry
Goliath has attracted the vast majority of
slings and arrows directed at third party
tee time marketers, but has continued to
charge ahead in search of not only more
customer courses and their golfers, but
various other ways to, depending upon
your point of view, expand either their
relationships or their infiltration into the
technological and operational aspects of
customer courses.
Part of the reason that course operators are so frustrated and confused by
their dealings with third party marketers
is that there are no standard guidelines,
which of course is what the NGCOA and
PGA are trying to establish. The deal that
course owner "A" receives may be significantly different than the one that course
owner "B" down the street is offered. The
big multi-course operators get a substantially different deal than the sole proprietor with one course receives in most
cases. Busy, high profile courses may get a
deal that differs markedly from the course
across town that's scuffling to do 15,000
www.PellucidCorp.com
rounds a year. Granted, a "volume discount" is a common practice in most vendor/customer dealings, but that doesn't
make it any easier for the course owner to
evaluate the deal he or she is being offered
by an online tee time marketer.
One thing that operators dealing
with GolfNow and perhaps a few others
should be crystal clear on is that you, Mr.
or Ms. Operator, are not their customer,
your golfers are. No matter how loudly
they proclaim their commitment to being
your "partner," your course is a revenue
stream for them, and more importantly,
so are your customers, whom they would
dearly love to convert to GolfNow customers. That, in case it hadn't occurred to
you, means that those customers will now
be on the receiving end of pitches to play
your competitors' courses, often at those
smoking "Hot Deals" barter prices. And
as more motivation for those companies
to convert your customers to theirs, many
have a transaction fee attached to every
round booked through their site. The next
time you see a press release or marketing
pitch trumpeting the number of rounds
booked through a company's site, there's
a good chance you can multiply that
number by 2 and add a dollar sign, for essentially doing nothing but maintaining
the web site and convincing an attractive
number of courses to post their available
times there.
A friend recently sent me a GolfNow
promotional flyer announcing a $10 rewards deal for golfers who booked either
10 regular rounds through GolfNow or
5 "Hot Deals" rounds. The example that
the good folks at GN attached showing
how it works was a golfer who booked
2 foursomes, all at the "Hot Deals" rate,
thus meeting (exceeding by 3, actually)
the 5 "Hot Deals" minimum booking
and earning the $10 reward. I should
point out that my friend showed the flyer
to several course operators, and none of
them were entirely certain what it meant.
My assumption is that the choice of 8
rounds was a convenience, since few golfers would be able to book a fivesome, and
that the 3 additional "Hot Deals" rounds
were simply "breakage" and disappeared.
Regardless of whether that is the case, or
if the extra 3 rounds go in a "bank" toward
the time a golfer books another 2 rounds
or more to reach 5 again, the critical message for an operator is that GolfNow is
providing an extra incentive for your customer to book the "Hot Deals" rounds.
And, oh by the way, "Hot Deals" rounds
are the barter times that GolfNow has
from you, so guess who keeps that money?
So, if you were in doubt about who GolfNow's customer is, a promotion like that
one should be all the proof you need that
it's the golfer, not you.
This is not to say that operators should
ignore the pitches of the various 3rd party tee time marketers who have been or
will be knocking on their door, including
GolfNow. There is no doubt that they all
offer some value in helping you fill your
tee sheet; the hard part is figuring out
whether (a.) the times generated by them
are worth more to you than you're giving
away in barter times or the risk of losing
control of your rate integrity or customer
database or (b.) whether those times are
times that you would or could have sold
anyway through your own web site or over
the phone. Pellucid has contended for
some time that many if not most operators could generate a significant amount
of those rounds on their own with more
and better marketing to their established
customer base and market area. The reality, apparently, is that many operators feel
they have neither the staff nor the marketing savvy to move those hard to sell
times, and are willing to risk some collateral damage to have a third party company help them do it. The other factor, of
course, when it comes to the barter system
of payment is that operators don't have to
write a check to their third party marketing "partner."
So, operators, weigh your options and
as the kindly old Sarge on NYPD Blue
used to say as his officers left the roll call
room, "Be careful out there."
-Jim Dunlap
The Pellucid PersPecTive
15
http://www.PellucidcorP.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - January 2016
TOC
2015 industry tale of the tape: What will the numbers tell us?
Uneven lies in search of a level playing field
Courses denied tax deduction for conservation easements
One-year anniversary of revolutionary course management technology product
December golf weather impact: Near-record for much of Northern US!
Chicago: Bull-ish on supply, Bear-ish on demand
Braving the third party tee time wilderness
The Pellucid Perspective - January 2016
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