Blainroe GC exploits the potential of online bookings

If you came across a club that was handling more green fees, yet had seen the phonecalls drop by 75% and had got rid of all the associated paperwork, you’d want to know how they do it.

http://www.blainroe.com/

 

Patrick Bradshaw General Manager of Blainroe Golf Club near Wicklow

" .. easy accessibility (for member to book online from homr, office and various points at the c;ub), combined with the visitors being able to go and book online via the club’s website, has lead directly to a drop in ‘phonecalls to the office of around 75%, and has meant a very welcome relief from the office staff needing to answer the ‘phones constantly.

 

“We can confidently see from the information we’re getting that 95% of the green fee business at Blainroe is within 30 miles of the club, and we’re 35 miles from Dublin. That helps us plan our marketing for attracting more business.

“What is really interesting is that our being online for tee times is attracting a younger profile of visitor, which is ideal. They’re finding us on the ‘net, they’re well heeled and happy to pay our green fees, and they seem to like the fact that we offer a better choice of deals, from early times to late times, as well as premium times, or times with food, etc. In turn, there’s no more needing to spend money advertising in the local press, so we’re maximising the yield from our green fee income in another way.”

“It’s also a very robust system. It doesn’t crash, and the back up and security are very good. The only thing I do now is to print out the tee time sheet in case the local electricity supply goes down!

“The BRS system is a great management tool for people in my position to see how to make the most of their core asset, the golf course. It’s much easier to see how it’s performing, and what it’s earning, when it’s busy and when it isn’t, so that you can see more easily how to market the less popular times.“And with golf club managers becoming younger, more IT literate and more commercially-oriented, this is just the right sort of tool at the right time for these managers to exploit.”

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For most golf clubs, green fees are a very welcome form of revenue, but for those dealing with the bookings at the club it usually means a great deal of time spent handling enquires and bookings over the telephone. The conundrum for many clubs is that attracting more green fee business means needing additional time or staff to handle the extra business - calls, e-mails etc. – which is somewhat self-defeating!

Patrick Bradshaw is both the General Manager of Blainroe GC www.blainroe.com near Wicklow, and the President of the Club Managers’ Association of Europe. He’s been involved with golf marketing and its online developments since 1999 following ten years with the PGA, so there’s no-one better qualified to give a critique of one of Ireland’s latest internet marketing success stories, the BRS Golf online booking system.

Blainroe GC had the BRS system installed for visitors’ bookings back in December 2005, and has been using it for members’ bookings since March 2006. Patrick had seen the potential for online tee time bookings for some while, but it wasn’t until the BRS system arrived that he found what he felt was a fully fledged and fully integrated system.

Paperless administration and e-mail communication

The initial attraction to Patrick was to get rid of all the paperwork associated with bookings. There are three modules within the BRS system, one for Administration, one for Visitors and one for Members. With all 700+ of Blainroe’s members registered with their e-mail addresses, one of the BRS features that Patrick uses every week is the Group e-mail application that comes as part of the booking system’s Administration module. He mails out a weekly update to all his members that contains a mixture of news, stories, rules of golf changes or issues, social event information, team news, Sunday lunch information, forthcoming competitions – all sorts of things to encourage the members to go online, book and visit the club more often.

Plenty of opportunities to book at the club

For competitions and casual golf, members are given a month’s notice to start booking tee times. While many can do this from their homes or offices, Patrick has made sure that there are plenty of terminals at the club where members can book as well, so that no-one is left high and dry. The Player Score Entry computer doubles up as a booking terminal as it’s now online, and there’s another online PC in the bar where bar staff can take ‘phone bookings alongside those made by the members. Then in the Pro Shop, another two computers are available, one of which is for swipecard-based competition bookings and registration. Lastly, there’s one more in the office, of course!

The net result is that instead of all the bookings being made via the office or the Pro Shop, they’re now spread throughout the various terminals around the club – and this is besides all those made online from members’ homes and offices. This easy accessibility, combined with the visitors being able to go and book online via the club’s website, has lead directly to a drop in ‘phonecalls to the office of around 75%, and has meant a very welcome relief from the office staff needing to answer the ‘phones constantly.

Booking online has other important staff benefits

Now that the bookings can be made online, the staff at Blainroe GC have seen some other benefits. When a new day’s tee times are made available, the first three hours times will go within 10 minutes of going online. There are ‘phonecalls to the club for bookings for the first 30 minutes or so, and then virtually no more calls for bookings, leaving staff to focus on their usual tasks around the club following the initial ‘rush hour’.

Very user- and office-friendly

For Patrick, one of the best things about the BRS system is its all round user-friendliness: “It’s easy for all age groups to use. We did initially run some tutorials in the bar for the Men and some others for the Ladies, and now even the non IT-literate ones can find their way around the booking system. It’s just like making a booking on Ryanair or EasyJet, which a lot of people are very familiar with now.

The BRS system is also very intuitive, and that’s essential because our visitors must be able to find it easy to book a tee time, even if it’s the first time they’ve come to our website to do that.

For the office, things are just as user-friendly with e-mails automatically generated and sent through to the office confirming the bookings have been made and the user’s card details for their payment on arrival at the club. 

Blainroe also uses the Online Tee Times service for marketing tee times allocated by the club, and both Online TeeTimes and BRS online systems are fully integrated and ‘talk’ to each other. So as soon as a tee time is booked via one of the systems, it’s made unavailable on the other in real time. This happily avoids any duplication or double bookings, which of course would otherwise result in a very miffed group of visitors or members! 

A sound investment

“The system’s more than paid for itself in its first year. The BRS system currently generates around 10% of our total green fee income, and this is without any real marketing effort to push people to our website. Now that we’re wholly familiar with the potential, we intend to market Blainroe’s online tee time capacity much more aggressively this year. 

“Enabling people to book tee times online for just over a year is proving to be very good for the club. Having introduced the new way of booking in December 2005, last year was the best ever for green fees. While the Ryder Cup effect had an impact, people are obviously finding our site easy to find and our tee times even easier to book.”

Moreover, they’re happy to pay decent prices. A weekday round at Blainroe is typically €50 and at weekends that increases to €70, and there’s no shortage of takers. When the rugby international was on recently, we offered a Rugby Special for the Saturday morning and got 30 visitors out of the blue, which meant extra income and quite a few more pints ordered in the bar. That’s very handy on what could have otherwise been a quiet day.”

A good source of management information 

Patrick can also get very useful visitor information as a result of being online: “We can confidently see from the information we’re getting that 95% of the green fee business at Blainroe is within 30 miles of the club, and we’re 35 miles from Dublin. That helps us plan our marketing for attracting more business.

“What is really interesting is that our being online for tee times is attracting a younger profile of visitor, which is ideal. They’re finding us on the ‘net, they’re well heeled and happy to pay our green fees, and they seem to like the fact that we offer a better choice of deals, from early times to late times, as well as premium times, or times with food, etc. In turn, there’s no more needing to spend money advertising in the local press, so we’re maximising the yield from our green fee income in another way.”

So what does Patrick think about BRS Golf?

And what does Patrick think about the team that developed the BRS system in the first place? “The guys at BRS are really very helpful. We first met in 2004 as they were starting to develop the system, and I made a lot of suggestions based on my experience in the PGA.”

Peter Kirk, Sales and Marketing Manager
Email: peter.kirk@brsgolf.com

Mobile: +44 (0) 7738-649171
Office: +44 (0) 2890-580363
Web   : www.brsgolf.com