Unlocking New Revenue Streams for Your Golf Course: Beyond the Basics

Jan 1

What is expanded revenue?
Unlike “expansion revenue” in the world of SaaS companies, expanded revenue at smb GOLF is revenue added to the business without creating cost beyond play and carts. We tend to focus on expanded revenue because it’s high margin with nearly all of it going to the bottom line. Earning more without incurring significant extra costs is important and a common theme among our golf course clients.
It’s important for golf courses to explore these revenue streams as the industry settles into a new normal of higher demand. This new level of demand presents opportunities most golf courses have not explored in over 15 years, if ever.

Actively market back nine starts during the first hour your golf course is open every day.
Be sure to share your tee sheet bookings with your greens crew to help them stay up to date on schedules. Take this one step further and require these bookings to be made online and at least one day in advance to limit conflicts with your internal teams and improve data collection.
This strategy helps your golf course compete with fitness centers and become attractive to those with limited schedules.
You don’t know if your one round per week golfers could become golfers that visit you twice a week until you try this. If 9 holes takes too long, find loops at your golf course of 4 , 5 or 6 holes. All of this revenue will be new to your golf course and will come with little added costs.

Tee time licensing works and has been in place for years.
What if every golfer were required to pay you $10 for the right to request a tee time? That sounds crazy but look at it a different way: hundreds of thousands of golfers pay $2.49 for the convenience of booking a tee time online. Golfers will pay for lots of different things for lots of different reasons. A tee time license fee is great for some golfers, when it’s sold properly.
The benefits of selling rights fees for premium tee times are numerous.
What’s the biggest risk for premium tee times (typically weekend mornings)? It’s no shows. Suffer 1 no-show foursome on Saturday and Sunday and it costs you $35,600 for the year. On the flip side, pre-sell all of your weekend morning tee times and you not only recoup the $35,600 you also turn the occasional threesomes into foursomes and earn an additional $26,700. That’s over $60,000 to the good just by adopting a tee time license program.

Selling exclusive access to expanded booking windows
I can’t think of a better item to sell that provides real value to the consumer and costs the business nothing than expanded booking access. It’s THE best form of expanded revenue. Confused? Expanded booking access is access to tee time reservations one week earlier than the current best booking access window you offer. You can sell this for $199 per year or maybe as much as $299. The buyer receives nothing more than the preferred access. When you create this option, you can also offer it as a reward within your loyalty program. This would mean there are two ways, for the golfer, to enjoy the expanded booking access: buy it or earn it through rounds played or dollars spent.

How do you expand revenue for your golf course without adding significant costs?
Most in golf, worldwide, agree Covid-19 improved demand for tee times. Other factors like Topgolf and current events like LIV Golf may have played a role too but nevertheless, golf tee time demand is up. That demand presents opportunity to find and/or manufacture opportunities for revenue your golf course has not enjoyed in the past. Be creative. Try ideas and seek out consultants like us at smb GOLF to discuss what’s happening across the country.
Sharing is caring
Share your experiences or ideas on expanded revenue strategies for golf courses in the comments below.

Mike Hendrix

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