The dust has settled, the chairs are stacked, and the booths are empty at the NGCOA‘s golf industry show. It was a whirlwind week of presentations, new business insights, and helpful connections, but eventually we all had to return home. On reflecting over what I learned, here were some of my major takeaways:
The golf industry is filling up with tech.
Even though the game of golf hasn’t changed too much in hundreds of years, the last few decades have brought a torrent of technological advancement to the world, and its reaching the golf course. It seems like an ever-growing stream of companies offer a never-ending array of products, and those products rarely seem interconnected.
Yet in all this confusion, there is some clarity. From what I’ve seen, the three essential technologies a course can have are:
- A cloud-based tee sheet
- A point of sale
- A customer database
In addition, these three need to be able to share data with each other; otherwise, the course operator is stuck with a lot of information that they can’t use. foreUP, as many of our readers already know, natively integrates these three in an unparallelled platform (but that’s neither here nor there, for this post.)
Golfers spend a lot of money.
The keynote speaker, Jenny Thomassian from Google Travel, stated that golfers account for nearly half of the spending in the $40 billion travel industry. Essentially this means that golfers want to play wherever they are in the world, and are willing to pay a pretty penny to do so.
What’s more, Mrs. Thomassian noted that more and more people are going to the web to find things in unique ways, and that learning how golfers want to interact with their travel actions is extremely important for operators moving forward.
You can’t do it on your own.
One of the main things that was emphasized at TechCon was the importance of a customer loyalty program. However, no tee sheet software offers a premier rewards program natively. The solution is to find a tee sheet software integrates that with others so you always have the technology you need. I encourage foreUP users to browse and enable an integration for this purpose via our in-software app store, for seamless communication & functionality.
It’s about the people.
Of course, after all talk about business, the most important thing to do is connect with customers. One of the most powerful sessions at TechCon was about empowering your team to be ambassadors of the course. Even with all the right technology and the perfect customer rewards program, your team is going to be the key differentiator in customer experience.
So what are the big takeaways from this year’s TechCon?
- Of all the technologies in golf, a course needs a tee sheet, a POS, and a CRM to get by
- Understanding travelers’ habits can help course profits
- You need integrations to maximize your impact
- When all’s said and done, it’s about the customers.
Want to help your customers? foreUP’s golf course operation software offers an integrated tee sheet, POS, and CRM, in addition to many other premium features.