introduction
About Play Golf Calgary
Play Golf Calgary operates four sites featuring six unique course experiences in the scenic Calgary, Alberta area. A leading and influential operator in Canada, Play Golf Calgary lives out their belief that “Life is Better with Golf.”
Starting off in the backshop in 1996, Slade King has been an integral part of the team at Play Golf Calgary for more than two decades. Now serving as Chief Operating Officer, he’s had a front row seat to witness, and be part of, their growth and success throughout the years.
In this case study, we share how the partnership between Play Golf Calgary and Priswing has helped uncover market opportunities, build revenue channels, and achieve operational and financial success.
Explore the Playbook: Priswing for MCOs
the background
Finding the Balance Between Price and Value
Like most operators, price has always been an important topic, and often, a difficult subject to find consensus.
And it makes sense – the best golf operators are sensitive to their customers’ satisfaction and want to ensure they are priced reflective to value. As Slade put it “I can remember sitting in meetings where we argued whether to increase prices by 50 cents or a dollar.”
With multiple courses providing unique experiences, the challenge of confidently aligning price to the golf experience and player satisfaction was an ever-present concern.
THE NEED
Charting a Path Forward in a Changing Landscape
Growing Expenses and Financial Pressures
For almost all golf facilities, expenses continue to grow and eat into the bottom line. A decrease in profitability has major downstream effects for any business and impacts the ability to continue to innovate and grow.
For Play Golf Calgary, increasing the rack rate was the most direct solution to combat this issue, but fear of overpricing and customer pushback were significant concerns. A lack of confidence in what price points were appropriate and achievable further fed into this uncertainty.
Staying Ahead of the Curve
Beyond the need for a new pricing strategy to bolster profitability, there was also the desire to grow loyalty programs, pre-payment, and the use of the online booking, to stay ahead of the curve in a fast-changing, tech focused landscape.
And to top it all off, whatever technology solution brought on board for Play Golf Calgary needed to be automated and able to be implemented across multiple courses while being centrally managed. Enter Priswing.
THE SOLUTION
Using Data and Experience to Shape the Future
Having used the Priswing Business Intelligence suite and its comprehensive reporting and analyses since 2019 – Play Golf Calgary decided to deepen their relationship with Priswing by bringing on the dynamic pricing module in 2021.
Priswing is uniquely and singularly powerful because of its machine learning algorithm that uses the course’s historic data for occupancy, rate, weather conditions, and timing of bookings, and then applies that to forecasted conditions. By knowing how golfers have responded to these factors in the past, Priswing can predict how a similar day in the future will shape up. Using this projection, Priswing anticipates occupancy and sets a price that can proactively respond to supply and demand.
At first, Slade says that Play Golf Calgary was unsure how much to trust the algorithm, and so the team used Priswing’s recommended prices as a guide to inform manual updates. However confidence quickly grew, as day by day the team saw the tee sheet continue to fill up and the revenue pour in using Priswing’s suggested rates.
With proven results and trust built in the system, Play Golf Calgary engaged Autopilot Mode shortly thereafter and has been reaping the benefits every since!
And with the ability to split and aggregate courses within the platform, Play Golf Calgary could assign access and monitor performance as granular or high-level as needed.
THE RESULTS
New Milestones and Levels of Success
Using Priswing, Play Golf Calgary was able to leverage A.I. powered dynamic pricing to support multiple initiatives and achieve their goals:
Increasing Revenue and Driving Profitability
Play Golf Calgary has seen a near 40% increase in the average green fee in the years since COVID and continues to see
double digit revenue increases year-over-year with Priswing’s adaptive and data-backed price strategies.
Growing Online Bookings While Reducing Time Spent on the Phone
By setting their over-the-phone rate statically at the top end of their price range, and communicating this out to customers, they were able to encourage golfers to visit their site for the best possible rate. This wasn’t just more efficient for the team, it also was able to support other initiatives like pre-payment.
Collecting Pre-Payment and Reducing No-Shows
No-shows and short-shows remain a major issue for the golf industry. Not only are they frustrating, but they have serious financial implications. With customizable dynamic pricing and increased online bookings, Play Golf Calgary was able to offer discounted rates to those customers willing to pre-pay. By incentivizing and growing pre-payment, Play Golf Calgary saw real results – estimating a
15-20% improvement.
Improving the Management Experience and Operational Efficiency
With unique views into each individual course, and also the group as a whole, Play Golf Calgary could centrally and individually track performance, run reporting, and manage pricing. The added benefit of Autopilot Mode also meant substantial time savings as the team no longer needed to manually monitor and update pricing.
THE CONCLUSION
A Transformation in Revenue and Customer Engagement
A dynamic golf operation needed a dynamic solution, and that’s just what Priswing was able to deliver.
Priswing ‘s predictive algorithm anticipates golfer behavior and responds with the best possible price to optimize occupancy for revenue. With insight into the future, prices can be held, raised, or lowered to increase profits by adhering to the fundamentals of supply and demand.
With Priswing, Play Golf Calgary was able to build a more profitable organization, enabling them to invest back into the customer experience and their operations – creating a business that is more resilient to whatever the future may hold.