We sat down with David Pillsbury, CEO of Invited, at the PGA Show in January and talked about how clubs can best manage membership growth, what amenities they should offer, and the daily challenges they face in the current economic climate.
Full transcript below (lightly edited for clarity):
How should clubs manage waitlists and potential membership growth?
It’s a great question and I think it’s a great question because there’s no standard approach to managing wait lists. It’s kind of all over the map. In fact, I’m on a wait list for a club that’s an expensive club with a long wait list where you have no golf privileges, no social privileges whatsoever. You are literally separated from the club while you’re on the wait list and therein I think lies the magic of the best answer. It’s club by club, but I believe that every club has the capability of figuring out how to create some level of access for the waitlisted member to keep them engaged in the club. Now I say clubs are different. Some, they have no capacity in golf, so maybe there isn’t any room for a waitlisted golf member to play golf.
But I would submit to you that every club I’ve ever seen has excess capacity in some of the off-peak times. It might be Tuesday afternoon after 3:00 and maybe a waitlisted member can only play nine holes but keep them engaged at the club. And I wished I had that capability at the club that I’m waitlisted on because right now I get nothing. So I think it’s very important to keep the member engaged and I would say, from a pricing standpoint, even though I’m not in this situation where I’m waitlisted, I think it’s also good to at least provide a range of where you expect the initiation fee will be once you come up on the waitlist and you have to write that check. But the key, I think, is to keep that member engaged with some level of access at the club. It might only be social, and it might only be social off-peak. Fine, but keep them engaged.
What amenities should clubs offer beyond golf, and how would they be utilized by members?
So when it comes to amenities and what is relevant to members at clubs, it really starts with understanding the marketplace and what’s available in the market. Who are your competitors? What amenities do they offer? And then what is it your local consumer is looking for? And one of the best examples I could give would be around racket. One of the fastest…
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