01865 582365

The “Deal Culture” of Golf Society Day Bookings

Posted in: Golf Started by

The “Deal Culture” of Golf Society Day Bookings

arm wrestle

The group golf market is indeed a competitive one. Formal golf societies through to more casual groups of friends buying ‘packaged’ green fee & food offerings – it’s something the vast majority of golf clubs offer and need to encourage in order to bolster their finances.

This competitive marketplace means the power is in the hands of the consumer. They know that clubs are competing against each other for their business and many of them use it to their advantage.

It’s strange that in retail UK consumers have a reputation of being shy to haggle. It’s perceived by some countries, rightly or wrongly, that they don’t like to negotiate the price. They are very accepting that what’s on the label is what’s got to be paid. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth for golf day organisers trying to book their next group outing – each one more than happy to squeeze every last penny out of the club.

The price on a golf society package is often NOT the price that usually ends up being charged.

So what are some of the solutions?

  • Stick to your guns and hold out for the marked-up price

After all, you’ve put that price on the package because you genuinely believe that’s what it’s worth. You may be right, but if the club up the road adopts a more flexible pricing posture you may very well miss out.

  • Price it up higher and accept that this price will be negotiated

Allowing for a negotiated reduction in the price makes a lot of sense. You’ll end up achieving your target price and fool the consumer into believing they’ve had a ‘deal’. However, any advertising would need to show the inflated price and that may not sit well next to your competitors and therefore reduce the number of inbound enquiries.

  • Negotiate with by “adding value” rather than reducing the price

This is a must. Golf club employees responsible for taking group bookings must be trained to recognize ‘added value’ opportunities and ALWAYS offer these to start with if the organisers starts to haggle. Some organisers will go for it but many will still hold out for the discount (be careful here – you may end up giving both)!!

The pragmatic solution is to accept, if the ‘added value’ strategy fails, a negotiation is going to have to take place in order to secure the business. The organizer needs to feel like they’ve worked as hard as they can to secure the best possible price for the group’s participants and the only way we, as a club, can give them that feeling it to willingly participate in the negotiation.

That will often be the case, but here at Promote Training HQ we don’t believe it should be seen as a compromise. Indeed, we believe that if it’s done in a structured, consistent and strategic manner, the club can come out on top and actually make more money from group bookings.

 

We look at this solution in our eLearning course – “Driving Green Fee Revenues”, along with lots of other strategies for growing visitor, guest and group green fee income.

Click here to read more about this course and how to enrol.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.