At the PGA Fashion & Demo Experience in Las Vegas this past August, educational sessions led by golf course owners and top executives in the industry spoke enthusiastically about alternative golf facilities, as a new way to immediately grow clubs’ bottom lines.

As the year quickly winds down, many clubs are in search of new revenue opportunities for 2020. With endless demands for growing revenue and cutting costs at your club, there is only so much money for investment on an annual basis. What are your plans to grow margins?

Golf has seen tremendous technology improvements in the past couple of decades that truly help the golfer play better. Golf clubs have helped our wild swings be more forgiving and provide great distance and accuracy, while golf balls have improved with distance, control and spin. But the most exciting advancement in the golf industry has been the recent explosion of Topgolf with Toptracer technology (by the way, Topgolf owns Toptracer).

Toptracer was founded in 2006 to help enrich the experience of watching golf on TV by tracking the flight of the ball and adding on-screen graphics. Now you can’t watch a PGA tournament without the use of Toptracer. This technology has expanded opportunities that were not originally thought of when it was conceived—like introducing this feature at every golf course and/or driving range.

This new entertainment idea has also brought new competitors, like Drive Shack, Big Shots, 4ORE, RealiTee and others around the world.

This isn’t breaking news to you. At the PGA Fashion & Demo Experience in Las Vegas this past August, educational sessions led by golf course owners and top executives in the industry spoke enthusiastically about this exact topic, as a new way to immediately grow your facilities’ bottom line.

Whether you are a private club, semi-private facility or resort, do you have a practice facility available to create a new experience? Or perhaps there’s an opportunity, with an excess plot of land, to build a new structure with 20 to 50 bays?

Would this technology help increase traffic at your club? For budget and investment purposes, the costs could range from minimal dollars to potentially needing millions (if a facility needs to be built).

The National Golf Foundation has reported that, with the introduction of Topgolf, there are more people willing to try golf. This “new” interest in golf is beneficial to golf properties everywhere. What a great opportunity for your club to market something that people are getting more excited about in general, especially millennials.

Many private and semi-private facilities wrestle with the decision to be open to the public or integrate with full or social memberships. With these additions or enhancements, you’ll produce new revenue streams. More customers will be entering your facility, increasing food-and-beverage revenue and traffic in the pro shop.

Build an atmosphere around casual attire and add music/TV screens for a memorable experience that will have customers coming back.

So we at Club + Resort Business would like to hear what you are doing to introduce new revenue streams. What new twists have you created with your driving range or golf course to boost the bottom line?

Listen to how Green Valley Golf Club in Sioux City, Iowa added revenue on their driving range in this episode of the Club + Resort Talks podcast.

Sean Carr