Moate GC Membership

Wichita Lineman

I'm a long standing member in Moate, currently Vice Captain. Like everywhere else we need members. We are trying to be realistic about our prices and have kept them as low as we can for about 3 years now.

Any opinions on our fees for 2016? Are they too low? Are they too high? Have we enough categories? How does this compare to your own club? Any suggestions for a another option for 2017?

Moate Golf Club - Membership Fees - 2016

Full Membership - €550 + GUI/ILGU levies

Distance - €200 + levies (Main residence over 60 kms)

Young Member (new category) - €250 + levies (Aged 18 to 25 years on 1 Jan)

Students (up to the age of 24 years) - €100 + levies (In full time education)

Invite A Friend

A full member of Moate Golf Club may invite up to two friends ( Max.2 ) to join Moate Golf Club as a Member’s friend. (Entitled to full membership). To qualify as a Member’s Friend for 2015 a person cannot have held membership of Moate Golf Club in 2012, 2013 or 2014.

Full Member plus 1 - €1,000.00 plus levies.

Full Member plus 2 - €1,450.00 plus levies.

Members’ friends who were members in between 2012 and 2015 may continue to be members friends for 2016 (at the new rate).

Wichita Lineman

129 views and no opinions. Interesting.

Ronney

Membership fees are relative to demand to some extent.

For Example most Dublin Clubs inside the M50 are in the €2000 region.

How do you fees compare to other courses in the area and how would your course facilities rate against them too.

How does your members friend thing work?

is year 1 1000 essentially a joining fee of 450 + 550 Annual membership, with 550 being due in year 2?

In this day and age I think people would be reluctant to pay Joining fees.

What age group of membership are you trying to recruit/target?
I would try get people in cheap eg Year 1 Only €400 and spend that year working on keeping them.

Seve OB

agree.

you have to look at whats around you and what people are willing to pay to join your club. I mean, if your rivals are 700, you are getting a deal by joining moat, but only if you have a course as good as them.

you need to also compare your actual club, what are the members involvements like, what way are coms run, team events

so all in all, not really easy to compare when most clubs offer different things

the only thing I might suggest is to offer some kind of pavilion membership, maybe for 50 quid a year to locals. that way they could come and use the bar/restaurant, and avail of practice facilities and you could tempt them in by offering a discount on green fees, or some kind of voucher so they don't think it is a dead 50 quid

Seve OB

agree.

you have to look at whats around you and what people are willing to pay to join your club. I mean, if your rivals are 700, you are getting a deal by joining moat, but only if you have a course as good as them.

you need to also compare your actual club, what are the members involvements like, what way are coms run, team events

so all in all, not really easy to compare when most clubs offer different things

the only thing I might suggest is to offer some kind of pavilion membership, maybe for 50 quid a year to locals. that way they could come and use the bar/restaurant, and avail of practice facilities and you could tempt them in by offering a discount on green fees, or some kind of voucher so they don't think it is a dead 50 quid

Wichita Lineman

We have no joining fee.

The 'friend' membership is €1,000 plus GUI for the 2 people so it's either €550 'member' / €450 'friend' of €500 each. There was more of a gap initially when it was brought in a few years ago and some have stayed while some have left as the gap narrows. It was never intended to have the gap stay the same in any event as that's punishing existing members for their loyalty.

There is a huge block of floating golfers now and I suppose we have made changes to encourage some of them to come to us and then we might keep some of them going forward. We've also significantly dropped the price for younger golfers.

Thanks for the feedback.

PARlance

Wichita Lineman wrote: »

We have no joining fee.

The 'friend' membership is €1,000 plus GUI for the 2 people so it's either €550 'member' / €450 'friend' of €500 each. There was more of a gap initially when it was brought in a few years ago and some have stayed while some have left as the gap narrows. It was never intended to have the gap stay the same in any event as that's punishing existing members for their loyalty.

There is a huge block of floating golfers now and I suppose we have made changes to encourage some of them to come to us and then we might keep some of them going forward. We've also significantly dropped the price for younger golfers.

Thanks for the feedback.

How is the take up of the new "Young Member" (18-24 but not a Student, as there's already a category for Students u25) going?

I can't imagine it'll attract many outside of the student bracket and being brutally honest, I would just call it a token effort at ticking the "need younger members" box so it can be said as you have above.

In my experience, the younger golfer most clubs need to attract extends right up to the under 40's. Such is life these days, that most people are only settled into a home, beginning families etc well into their 30's. 20-30 years ago people had started families, bought houses at 25... That's not the case anymore.

The 25-40 bracket is the most important bracket to focus on imo and you're not focusing on that.

How are you attracting floating golfers? Another very important demographic. The number of nomadic golfers surpassed club golfers in the UK recently, I don't think we have stats here for them, but I'm sure we're similar enough to the UK trend.

I don't think the plus 1 / invite a friend is a big enough discount but your fees are cheap so there's only so far you can reduce them.

You're a credit to the club by the way. Hope no offence is taken.

PARlance

Forgot to mention that I joined St. Anne's last year as part of their "Lifestyle" Membership. They still have an entrance fee but lifestyle members, anyone under 40, could join without paying that 5k (afaik) fee and just pay the annual subscription of circa 1,200 all in (comp credit, bar credit and GUI included).

There was talk of a scheme that for each year up until 40, you earn a credit that can be offset against your entrance fee. A very smart move if that's implemented.

The members agreed to allow 50 spots for this category. They had them filled within a year and there's a waiting list of 10+ at present. The older members by and large recognised and welcomed the young(ish) blood into the club as they realised it was needed. Probably one of the best initiates I've seen implemented along with the Castleknock credit based system.

CMOTDibbler

In terms of competition around Moate, there's Mount Temple; €500 (Family: €750), Glasson (they don't say what their fees are) and New Forest: €699 (Family €1100).

Further away are Athlone: €725 (Family: €1575, 1st year incentive €450) and Mullingar: €851. Athlone and Mullingar are in a bit of a league of their own, so I've only included them as an illustration of what the premium rates are. Glasson don't advertise but I suspect they are also expensive enough.

There are a couple of things I would suggest. Firstly, the family membership is a bit high compared to the competition. At €1075, it represents a discount of basically €25 plus student fees. Mount Temple are offering a discount of €250 plus students and New Forest a discount of €300 plus students. The whole point of family memberships is to get the kids in and get them playing.

The invite a friend thing is a bit confusing and realistically could just as easily be done by having a 1st year incentive rate like Athlone do or perhaps extend it for a couple of years.

Finally, no offence but the website is dreadful.

Ollieboy

Wichita Lineman wrote: »

We have no joining fee.

The 'friend' membership is €1,000 plus GUI for the 2 people so it's either €550 'member' / €450 'friend' of €500 each. There was more of a gap initially when it was brought in a few years ago and some have stayed while some have left as the gap narrows. It was never intended to have the gap stay the same in any event as that's punishing existing members for their loyalty.

There is a huge block of floating golfers now and I suppose we have made changes to encourage some of them to come to us and then we might keep some of them going forward. We've also significantly dropped the price for younger golfers.

Thanks for the feedback.

This is a huge problem for all clubs, this floating membership.

The latest GUI figures show that their is no increase in membership and all the clubs are chasing the same floating members, this usually means the static members pay more and then get fed up and join the floating group.

This adds pressure for clubs to keep cutting cost and dropping subs, not a good solution for the golf industry in the long term but I know most people here won't agree.

The solution is very simple, less golf clubs and members and banks stop supporting loss making clubs. The GUI could take action here to help the situation.

I personally like the idea of joining different clubs every few years but most clubs in the country are only at 50 to 60% full and the product they are offering is starting to suffer due to lack of maintenance due again to lack of turnover.

It's a real race to the bottom at the moment.