Relevant facilities are critical to retain the members you have and to appeal to the ones you want.
While the COVID-19 pandemic brought misery and havoc throughout the country, it was a bit of a tonic for the club industry. After years of difficulty competing for new members interested in more contemporary activities and a lighter atmosphere and challenges engaging their time-constrained existing members, country clubs found their footing during the lockdown. Many used the period to operate in new and simpler ways, which created a looser, more relaxed experience. The new and different programs turned out to be more in sync with the times. A member-centric environment again became the norm. Ultimately, while COVID-19 made people sick, it cured the disease of irrelevance that had been infecting clubs for decades.
It is critical that club leaders monitor the relevance of their membership experience. Importantly, this is not a test to assure this relevance is for them, per se, but to recognize that it is the consumer—the current and prospective member—who determines what is relevant. All too often, clubs take a stance that the consumer should want what it offers because it is what long-tenured members enjoy or that it has always been that way. In prior generations, members embraced going to the club in their finery, sipping cocktails in the living room and dining at a leisurely pace in the hushed tones of the formal dining room. It is a lovely concept, but one we would consider almost Victorian these days. The evolution toward a more casual social and dining vibe was painful for many clubs, to the point that when the market moved, many clubs continued to levy minimums and browbeat members into dining at the club out of a sense of duty, not because it was one of their favorite places to go. They hung on to these rooms all too long, bemoaning the death of tradition while reveling in their obsolescence.
The concept of relevance is akin to value, as value is derived from a sense of fulfillment from frequent use and a feeling of pride. For the club, this is manifested in demand for membership, the ability to backfill naturally occurring attrition and drives member utilization. It shows up on the books as increased initiation fee income, higher capital revenue and rising net worth on the balance sheet.
While club members tend to be a group that respects traditions and history, each month they are deciding to pay dues or invite friends to join their club because it is something that matters in their life. Their club membership is important to them on many levels, but a lot of it traces back to the quality of the facilities. There is no better way to express a club’s strategy than in how often and where it invests its capital.
As we look to the decade ahead—one that has the potential to be a golden age for private clubs as the aging Millennial cohort reaches their prime joining and earning years—clubs would do well to reinvent their physical plant to match the changing times. Here are some of the winning investments:
New golf environments: Regular investment in your golf course is important to retain members. Investing in the new and fun aspects of golf will attract new members. Think putting courses, short courses, golf performance centers and ranges with technology for training and fun. See “Golf in the Age of Technology” on new golf facilities like those at Washington Golf and Country Club.
Quick casual dining: Going from formal to casual dining was sometimes painful for clubs. They seem quicker to embrace quick casual dining. Cafés, bistros, outdoor dining venues and Starbucks/Panera styled rooms are cropping up. They provide a very casual vibe, make it a place where it’s ok to pop open a laptop or to get a bite on the way from the fitness center to the office or after a game of pickleball. The Generation Next program at Carmel Country Club in Charlotte is the gold standard here.
Use of outdoor spaces: COVID-19 accelerated the trend toward outdoor spaces and turned it on its ear. Clubs bought tents, covered decks, and deployed fire pits and other warming devices. Members loved it. With effective planning these spaces can become three-season or year-round destinations. The best things about it for clubs is that the views cannot be beat.
Health and wellness: A fitness center features a broad array of equipment in a room there for your use. A wellness center amps that up to include studios, spaces for stretching and training and treatment rooms for physical therapy, reflexology and other manual therapies. Data and lifestyle trends continue to support the notion that fitness and wellness will be to the club of the future what golf was to its past.
Children and family spaces: Modern families do not get babysitters. Both parents work a lot, and they do not enjoy or have access to babysitters like their parents. This means they are bringing the kids to the club with them, but not necessarily to sit with them the entire time. Clubs can take unused spaces and easily create children’s activity rooms that allow mom and dad to linger longer over a meal or relax with friends.
Game rooms: Video games are not only for kids. While the clubhouse of the future will include children’s activity rooms, there will be gaming spaces for big kids too. While we might think of video games as individual pursuits, most gaming takes place in groups. Those simulator rooms being built for golfers are laying the groundwork for all out gaming, a millennial passion.
Wi-Fi cafés/remote work: The jury is still out on the ultimate shape of the office, but most bets are on a hybrid work style. It seems hard to imagine that after enjoying a year or two of flexible hours, athleisure attire and no commute, those who have jobs that are conducive to remote work will want to keep that going at least two or three days a week. This means they need space to knock out some quick emails or to take a Zoom meeting, perhaps after nine holes or a workout.
Pickleball: Outdoor games are changing too, led mainly by the growth of pickleball. With its easy take-up, fast pace, short time frame and round robin playing style, it is the perfect community building activity. You can also fit at least three courts where there was a single tennis court, taking what was often lightly used space into a hub of fun and games.
INVEST IN FACILITIES
The clubhouse of the future must mimic the changing home. They will be places for relaxation and gathering, exercising and playing games, checking in on work and spending time with the family. They will be relevant to the hybrid lifestyle where socialization-play-work happen when members want and need them to. By investing in your physical plant, you can make your club a year-round center of activity.
We are on the threshold of transformational, generational change and the financial markets, where members are flush with cash and interest rates remain historically low, are a convergence that clubs should leverage.