Page 22 - 2025 GBC spring English

The Labor Challenge
Q. Which, if any of the following, have you done to support your staffing efforts this season?
Moved to more flexible staff scheduling in an attempt to
improve retention
Made a concerted effort to transform and improve
workplace culture
Made a more concentrated effort to promote from within
Looked to non-traditional sources to find labor talent
Made significant changes to staff training practices
None of these
56%
48%
41%
37%
19%
11%
Facilities must take an objective, candid and sometimes painful
20
look at how they are being perceived in their local marketplace and in
many instances must make careful decisions about how they want to
build their culture and reputations not just among existing customers,
but those of competing facilities and those who have lapsed in their
loyalty. Interestingly, our research has shown a shift in customer focus
over the past few years, away from an emphasis on finding and retaining
new customers, to retaining core customers.
Culture is an important and often overlooked component of how
facilities deliver on customer expectations. Consistently in our tracking
research, there has been a distinct correlation between satisfaction,
retention and the ability of a golf facility to perceive and adapt to the
changing attitudes and demands of its current and future best customers.
Further amplifying the prominence of facility culture in recent years is
the need to attract, retrain and reimagine staff culture and fit. In
numerous interviews and discussions with facility operators, we are
hearing more about finding people who have the right attitude and
commitment levels superseding technical skills or experience that can
be taught and trained in many instances.
This also hearkens back to the aforementioned battle between high
tech and high touch. Some facilities have dove headfirst into automating
tee time reservations, check in and payment to the extent that digitally
savvy golfers needn’t have any human interaction at all on their way to
the first tee. Others have recognized where a more personalized
experience is more essential and cater their customer-facing processes
accordingly. In a sense, the successful facility in 2025 must not only
determine who they are in the mind of the current and prospective
customer, but who they want to be.
We, expectedly, are bullish on creating and maintaining an ongoing
dialogue with golfers and other facility patrons. This goes beyond the
litany of highly automated and impersonal do it yourself survey
offerings that are typically administered in off-the-shelf CRM packages,
served to the person booking the tee time and missing others in the
group, as well as rejectors who are playing elsewhere. These packages
may be creating more misinformation, than true insights which in
today’s hyper-local environment are
only achievable through professionally
administered, customized deep dives
that often integrate elements of both
qualitative and quantitative research.
Of course, the good news is that
we are finally having these discus-
sions in 2025. Long gone are the
build it and they will come
aspirations of previous up-markets.
That today’s golf facility operator is
more attuned to the evolving
customer mindset and amenable to
making the necessary changes
required to meet these needs, is a
momentous leap forward. Recog-
nizing that one size does not fit all is
part of the equation. Discovering the
implications of tailoring offerings
and communications strategies
accordingly, brings a level of
sophistication that was often lacking
in the past and simultaneously better
positions ourselves to withstand
potential economic fluctuations and
uncertainty that we must still
navigate in the years ahead.
G Gol olf f
B Bu usi sin ness ess
Canad Canada a
22
Golf Business Canada