Since its inception in 2011, the UK Golf Course Owners Association has believed in the benefit of sharing best practice and how data driven insight can help owners and operators make informed decisions to enable venues to tackle the challenges and thrive in a very competitive market place.
The Club Benchmarking Programme developed and run by SPORTS MARKETING SURVEYS INC. is at the forefront of this mind set and has been in operation from day one of the organisation.
Monitoring, tracking and benchmarking participating members’ operational KPI’s, from green free revenue through to F&B margins or academy and driving range usage, enables venues to identify where opportunities for improving efficiency and profit lie and to contextualise the performance of their facility with the national picture or compared to venues of a similar set up.
James Cameron, General Manager of the UK Golf Course Owners Association commented: “SPORTS MARKETING SURVEYS INC., specialist golf research consultants, provide outstanding services to the clubs who are members of UKGCOA. The reports they provide are outstanding, and benchmarks revenue from rounds played, the pro shop, food and beverage….literally anything and everything you could need as an owner/operator to analyse how you golf business is performing. They are quite literally the blood test of a club, the results are necessary and you act upon them.
“The quarterly and annual reports that are sent to member clubs are remarkably clean and easy to digest for the club and they avoid waffle. It is a source of delight to the Board of UKGCOA Directors to announce that we have reached an agreement to continue the partnership with SMS; long may it continue.”
Richard Payne, Senior Manager – Sports Accounts, for SPORTS MARKETING SURVEYS INC. added, “SMS INC are delighted to continue our relationship with the UKGCOA and take the Benchmark Programme into its third year. Following the worst year on record for rounds played in 2012 and a first quarter that saw rounds down by 31%, projects like this are critical for proactive clubs to understand the environment they are working in and use real data to inform decision making”.
Colin Mayes, Chief Executive of BGL Golf and Chairman of UKGCOA, said: “Burhill Golf Club sees enormous benefits from being part of the SMS INC Benchmarking scheme. Our club really buys into the thinking that this is a crucial service and one which we feel it is only going to get even more important. In my opinion, it is crucial that clubs benchmark themselves against national trends. The data on number of rounds played alone is vital, never mind the other information. The reports are used to help us allocate budget, motivate staff and even helps us forecast how busy a month is likely to be. It is certainly a massive advantage that this service is being undertaken by a specialist golf research company in SMS INC, as they have their finger on the pulse of this industry, but the most pleasing aspect is that there are so many clubs taking part so the data is unquestionably representative of the industry.”
UKGCOA www.ukgcoa.com
SPORTS MARKETING SURVEYS INC www.sportsmarketingsurveysinc.com