Golfers are increasingly turning to golf cars to make their round of golf at Kytaja Golf in Finland even more pleasurable and stress-free.
The club has doubled its electric vehicle usage over the last three years and, as a consequence, enjoyed an increase in revenues year on year since 2008.
Visitors for the plethora of corporate days hosted by the club – located just a 30-minute drive from Helsinki – are, perhaps unsurprisingly, among the quickest to hire from Kytaja’s 75-strong fleet of Club Car Precedent i2 emission-free golf cars, of which almost half are fitted with Visage.
Indeed, the 30 Club Car golf cars currently fitted with the features-driven mobile golf information system have quickly become the most popular version to rent – even though they are €5 a round more expensive than those in the remainder of the fleet.
Golf car rental rates at Kytaja rose by 38% in 2010 over the previous year and by 10% in 2009 over the preceding 12 months. The club – which opened the first of its Thomas McBroom-designed courses alongside a beautiful lake shoreline in 2003 – annually logs 30-40,000 rounds over its two courses.
“Our club is located within a naturally hilly and undulating 200-hectare landscape, and many of our members and visitors appreciate being able to use one of Club Car’s user-friendly golf cars to make the experience of playing our two 18-hole courses a little easier,” said Juha Repo, Director of Golf.
“In addition, the Visage system provides accurate details of course measurements and hole descriptions, which is ideal for our many corporate-day visitors who are perhaps unfamiliar with our courses, as well as giving them the ability to order food and beverages.
“I would say that on a typical day at least half of our Club Car fleet is rented out – and this figure increases significantly during our many corporate golf days. We have doubled our rental income from our golf cars over the last three years.”
Kytaja purchased its initial fleet of 30 Club Car golf cars in 2005 and recently supplemented this collection with a further 45, including 20 with Visage. Within its fleet, the club has 75 for course use and an additional 10 utility vehicles for staff use.
“We have been delighted with our Club Car fleet right from the initial purchase in 2005 – they have always been extremely reliable and the new Visage technology is excellent, allowing us to offer customers added value and the club to control the cars’ movements.
“Businesswise it’s been a very profitable move for us, helping us to carefully control our expenditure, and we would expect to recoup our investment on Visage in a relatively quick timespan.”
Kytaja Golf www.kytajagolf.fi
Club Car www.clubcar.tv
Visage www.visagegolf.com