Golf courses are not inexpensive to run. From the manicured lawns to the irrigation and maintenance, there are a lot of costs involved in the upkeep of a modern golf course, especially in temperate regions where golfers prefer playing on short, even greens. On top of this, there’s staff to pay, electricity and water bills, and other small costs that most people don’t even consider when they’re visiting the course during their day off.
The Income Challenges of A Golf Course
Let’s first picture a modern golf course. It’s generally a large space, with well-maintained lawns, plenty of green spaces, some forested regions, a couple of buildings, a parking lot and fences, and other small areas around the edges of the main playing course.
All this needs to be maintained at all times, which is vitally important considering that a large part of a golf course’s popularity is based on reputation alone. After all, a significant portion of a club’s clientele tends to be made up of the wealthy and elite; people who typically expect a course to look and run a certain way. There are countless stories of courses having to shut their doors during economic downturns, and it’s often because maintenance costs became too large, and they began to lose club members.
The 2020 pandemic put a lot of pressure on courses around the world, and it became a necessity to find additional income streams on top of the fees paid by members, something that many industrious courses focused on.
Renting Out Equipment
While there’s obviously an upfront capital investment associated with this method, it’s still something that most clubs will do, and can be an excellent method of generating further income every month.
Loyalty Programs
One such success is the loyalty program, where members are able to receive special rewards for those members that are with a course for long periods of time, something that’s popular in the NZ mobile pokies world, as a prime example.
Research has found that a minority of members tend to generate most of the income, so it’s important that a golf course do everything it can not just to attract new customers, but to ensure that their existing customers feel welcomed and valued. Loyalty points have become more commonplace in recent years, where members are able to use points to receive various rewards.
Advertising
Golf tournaments take place all the time, with many of them being televised, which makes for a great way for the course to earn extra income through ad placement, and often a course will put up some advertisements for the public, too.
Merchandise
Merchandise remains a fantastic way of bringing in more money, which is why many clubs have started their own merchandise catalogues over the years. This can sometimes be in the form of branded merchandise that’s given away as a prize, but it’s also common to sell merchandise on behalf of a popular brand of golf clubs or gear.