What have private clubs always offered their members?
Excellent golf, tennis, yachting or athletic facilities. Fine dining. Fitness centers. Attentive, personalized service.
A sense of luxury and particular social standing.
In the last few decades, those core offerings have remained fairly consistent.
But, today’s private clubs are struggling to attract new members, keep current members, and prove their necessity to time-starved families. Today’s general managers are also facing new business-related challenges as clubs become larger, more intricate operations.
What’s going on? What’s changed?
More importantly, how will today’s club—and club manager—fare in the future?
Changing Times, Changing Membership Needs
Of all the general managers and board members Club Director spoke to for this article, several distinct themes resonated in regard to how today’s club differs from yesterday’s: members now enjoy more luxury options, suffer greater time restriction, utilize the club more with families in tow, and are younger. These changes, however subtle or obvious, have obviously and greatly affected the private club industry.
After all, each day, the average American is faced with more luxury opportunities than ever before, considering the rise in fine-dining restaurants, boutique spas, specialized fitness studios, and exclusive resorts. And, considering today’s American never seems to have enough hours in the day, people place much greater value on their social and/or recreational time.
Put together, these factors have changed members’ views of and expectations for their club.
“Today, you have a level of quality and luxury everywhere you go,” remarked Zen Mikulski Jr., general manager of Lehigh Country Club in Allentown, Pa. “Years ago, the club was the only type of place offering luxury services. But today’s industry is just much more competitive than it used to be.”
The rise in luxury offerings and their accessibility means private clubs must now prove their significance and necessity in a new way to today’s time-starved and cash-strapped Americans.
“Members are more facilities- and services-driven than they are driven by the need to belong to a private club for prestige reasons,” said Alan Gamble, general manager of the Landings Club in Savannah, Ga. “They’re asking, ‘What’s in it for me and my family, and what can we get out of the club?’ Membership is now about more than just being thrilled by admission and doesn’t create the social standing as much as it once did.”
Mikulski agreed. “Today’s membership doesn’t perceive the club in the same way as yesterday’s membership,” he said. “Then, joining a club was very prestigious; it was a sign of success in your industry to join. Today, it’s just not perceived that way. Club membership has more of a practical, useful application.”
If this is the case, how do clubs ensure they’re tailoring amenities and services so members continue to use the club? Larry Thompson, general manager of the Missouri Athletic Club in St. Louis noted how, at the MAC, they’re constantly striving to understand the MAC’s “practical application” to their members’ lives by asking the question: What makes a club membership beneficial?
And the MAC’s response? The club recently opened another facility across town, making its amenities and services more accessible for a large portion of the club’s membership and providing the convenient availability of not one but two facilities.
At the Ocean Reef Club in North Key Largo, Fla., the club has greatly enhanced its concierge service to ensure members fully relax and enjoy their time at the club. “You just tell us what you want, and we’ll get it for you,” said General Manager Paul Astbury.
And the Landings Club now boasts a full-time youth director who spends her entire day planning, organizing and overseeing daily children-focused events at the club.
In fact, making sure a club has offerings beneficial to the entire family is especially important, considering more and more club members are younger and are bringing their children with them to the club.
“Unlike previous generations, today’s club member is incredibly time restricted and interested in spending a lot more time with their kids and a lot less time at the club,” Gamble noted. “Or, if they are at the club, they’re there with their families. People have much less of a singular use of the club.”
“Family demands are definitely different,” agreed Paul Astbury. “Ten years ago, if you had a good golf course, a decent clubhouse and reasonable food and beverage operations, you were okay. Now, it’s families.
“Members come to the club wanting to know, what will my children do? What will my teenagers do? How much babysitting do you have?” he continued. “It’s really all about families now in attracting and retaining members.”
Clubs around the country are responding to this family-focused trend by adding new youth programs, offering family-friendly events, and even providing kid-friendly carts out on the golf course. Since Gen Xers and Yers are the most tech-savvy generation ever, more and more clubs are now equipped with wireless Internet access and have allowed the use of hand-held games in the dining rooms.
“Clubs just can’t be adult-only or adult-focused facilities anymore, otherwise your supply of younger members will simply shift to another club that suits their needs,” Gamble noted.
Changing Times, Changing Club Operations
As membership needs and preferences have shifted in the last 10 years so have club operations. Today’s club staffs are more professional, more highly skilled, and better educated than ever before—which is necessary, considering the effects of new technology, new laws and regulations, new competition and new employment-related issues. What does this mean?
“Quite simply, a club should be run like a business,” Astbury remarked. “There’s the underlying, ‘Don’t mention the words profits or money,’ in the private club world, but the fact of the matter is, with dues-paying or equity members, the club is responsible for how their money is used and for their member satisfaction.”
Thompson agreed. “Today’s boards of directors feel very strongly that their club should be operated as a business, which includes building a good, solid staff and following closely what’s going in the marketplace to ensure your club is competitive.”
Astbury also noted today’s increased focus on operating results, financial reports, new labor and human resource laws, long-term strategic planning, and employees’ career development, areas on which clubs used to place little if any emphasis. New laws and regulations, especially Sarbanes-Oxley, are also forcing clubs to pay attention to auditing and governance policies and practices unheard of just a decade ago.
“Sarbanes-Oxley will have a huge shake out,” Astbury predicted. “Auditors are going to come in and find some clubs have the wrong types of controls in place, and boards and committees are suddenly going to feel very exposed.”
“There are so many more kinds of governmental restrictions in place today for all businesses, clubs included,” added Thompson. “We now have a lot of new accounting rules coming into play that necessitate a need for staff and management to study and be conversant in much broader and more complex issues.”
Staffing has become a particular focus these days, as more young professionals look to make a career in the private club world. CMAA has organized more than 40 student-focused chapters at universities and colleges across the country, and the number of schools offering club and hospitality management programs, degrees, and internships has exploded in the last 20 years.
“Today’s club staff is coming into the industry from an educational point, not necessarily from moving up through the ranks at a club,” Thompson said. “Today’s colleges and universities offer more opportunities for formal education specific to club management, and CMAA has really developed its student chapter program. There’s just much more awareness of career possibilities in club management today.”
“The sophistication and skill of each position within the club has increased, from the servers to the golf shop to the kitchen,” Mikulski said. “Everyone has to be much better educated with regard to their respective position.”
Changing Times, Changing Management
And when Mikulski says “everyone,” he’s even including club managers. Mikulski observed that today’s manager needs to be extremely well informed on issues both at the club and in the industry and then “keep the board up to date on everything so the board can make better, more informed decisions.”
“As a manger today, you need to know what’s going on in the marketplace, what’s happening on Capitol Hill, as well as what kinds of questions to ask various consultants who come in to do work on the club,” added Thompson. “You have to have a good grasp on so many more areas than you did 20 or 25 years ago. You need awareness on so many more fronts.”
These fronts include accounting, administration, operations, and human resources, to name just a few. “Due to the professionalization of the club manager’s position, the role is now seen as truly a business professional,” Gamble remarked. “Club directors are more time-crunched and are really looking for a chief operating officer to run their club.”
And, as club managers do take on these “chief operating officer” responsibilities, many are finding themselves inundated with every business professional’s greatest headache: e-mail. Although a wonderful method of communicating with busy members and directors, many club managers also worry about and struggle with handling the massive amount of e-mails.
“In the old days, you used to wait for the mail to come each day,” Astbury laughed. “Now, I’m facing 200 or more e-mails a day. How do you deal with that? When I get home, I’m still answering e-mails until 10 o’clock at night.”
Ron Elenbaas, the past chairman at Ocean Reef, had a different concern: who was reading those 200 or more e-mails. “As chairman, I found the tricky thing about e-mails was I never knew who all was copied,” he said. “I’d respond to everything, but I knew and I could tell, just from walking around and talking to people, that I hadn’t responded to everyone—because I didn’t see everything that was out there.”
Communication, however, whether via e-mail or face to face, has become a cornerstone of a successful club manager’s job. In today’s club, a manager has more committees from which to hear ideas, more staff concerns to which attention should be paid, and more diverse member needs to which to cater.
And, considering we’ve entered an era in which news, information, e-mail and even people can be accessed 24 hours a day, today’s average American is less inclined to take silence or closed doors well.
“There’s a social trend today toward institutional openness,” Elenbaas observed. “People expect openness about everything and from everyone, including the government, companies, suppliers, and so on. There’s the notion that everyone has a right to know everything. And this has certainly affected clubs.”
The effect has been that managers and club leaders must carefully pick and choose what information should be distributed to the entire membership and in what way.
“As general manager, I’m an information carrier,” Mikulski said. “My job is to make sure the right information is communicated to the boards, the committees, and the members.”
Open communication goes both ways, though—managers need to talk openly and knowledgably to their boards and board directors need to communicate regularly with their fellow club members.
“When you have a president like Paul who’s running the club, your job is to get him what he needs, provide cover, and then do a lot of communicating to the membership,” Elenbaas said. “I spent the vast majority of my time as chairman communicating—where we were going, what’s next, what does this mean.
“Members care deeply about their club,” he continued. “They talk about it all the time and weigh in on it all the time. And it is Paul’s and the board’s responsibility to do a tremendous amount of communicating back.”
The Future Change
Communication is certainly one area of a club manager’s job that will never change, even if the method of communication does. Also, the essential responsibilities of a good general manager will continue to be providing an unparalleled membership experience and operating the club wisely and lawfully.
But, as we all know, change is inevitable, begging the question: what’s in store for the years ahead?
Many club leaders agree creating family-focused entertainment options is absolutely essential, as is updating or adding fitness and spa facilities—too much competition exists in today’s luxury industry to ignore those amenities. Dress codes, a hot topic at many clubs across the country, will loosen like neckties, considering the up-and-coming club member is of a younger, more causal generational mindset.
And, the ripple effect doesn’t stop there.
New types of club members also mean new types of board leadership.
As club boards increasingly consist of younger, more diverse and more business-minded members, they are slowly steering their clubs in new directions that focus time and attention on creating sound, long-term strategic visions for the club rather than dealing with day-to-day operational issues.
And, most of all, a new generation of club managers and leaders are poised to ascend the ranks and take the reins, bringing with them more specialized education than ever before.
“Today, you’re getting highly skilled and educated hospitality majors out of good colleges and with great internships or apprenticeships on their resumes,” Mikulski remarked. “They’re ready to go, and they’re bringing the industry up to a whole new level in the process.”
Marique Newell is a contributing editor to Club Director. She most recently wrote “Conference Prepares Club Leaders for Change” in the May/June 2008 issue.