 Jeffrey D. Brauer |
Given that Golf Course Industry’s guest columnist Bob Lohmann and I once shared a drafting room at the firm of Killian and Nugent, it’s probably no surprise that in many ways, he and I still think alike. In his recent guest column, he proclaimed the master plan as “dead,” replaced with what he calls the “Cost Benefit Analysis Plan,” or CBAP. I don’t think the master plan is dead, but do believe it should evolve along the lines Bob mentions. Architects have been promoting “your father’s master plan” for more than 50 years as the cure for what ails your course, but the traditional master plan needs to be “tweaked” to be relevant today when those in the golf business are concerned about, um, well, business concerns. I have misgivings about even more consultants pushing my fellow golf course architects down the pecking order, and the implication that great design shouldn’t be a course’s first priority. However, it really is wise to look at the big picture first, since your golf course may be the most important part of your “brand” – but it is still just a part. I am preparing several business-oriented renovations and master plans. These courses are considering where and how they draw business before deciding what and how to renovate the course. It makes a difference in how we think. One club realized it was squarely in the middle of the mid-level club market. No amount of design improvement was going to move them up in the market place or help them in their marketing niche. They spent on infrastructure, setting the goal of the best-maintained mid-level club in town to sell their memberships. A resort needed to cut irrigation drastically, both for permit reasons and to save $1 million a year. We showed them how to reduce their turf by 30 percent and maintain their playability. A public course reversed a trend of falling play with an “extreme makeover.” This strategic move improved their balance sheets by more than $1 million. Because the course on the cusp of being able to compete in a different market segment, coupled with improved design, it allowed them to upscale fees rather than compete solely on low green fees. Another course had an easily-defined problem – their large 1980s-era tees took just more than eight hours to mow, and we reduced their size and number to reduce mowing time and avoid paying overtime. However, the relatively new “science” of golf course renovation cost benefit analysis can’t always pinpoint the true economic value of golf course changes as easily as saving a few hours of overtime. Typically, money saved is money reallocated to other maintenance tasks and few courses have the time and motion studies to prove the exact amount of savings. On the revenue side, we have seen visible design changes improve rounds played for at least five years, and that gaining just a few new members or a few thousand rounds can easily pay for some golf course improvements at today’s borrowing costs. That said, when looking forward, it’s always a projection. But, there is still room for hard-to-quantify improvements like smoother putting greens that impress your member’s clients, or improvements to your “customer experience,” even if “just because.” In one current master plan, our business consultant (Sirius Golf Advisors) pinpointed a perfect correlation of $33 in revenues per dollar spent on marketing efforts. Design changes are both harder to track and unlikely to produce that kind of yield, but Bob is on the right track. It’s a great idea, deserving of a catchier marketing acronym! Lohmann comes a little closer to a memorable marketing phrase when he says, “The major innovation of the Cost-Benefit Action Plan is its emphasis on economic efficiencies, enabled by design.” We can only presume Bob considered and rejected other monikers like “Payback Plan,” or “Cost Ramification Analysis Plan.” One has to presume an architect using those acronyms would be ranked both No. 1 and No. 2 among master planners. Until next time. |
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