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By Steve Eubanks
Chris Boos and Forewinds Hospitality are taking a never-before-seen approach to dynamic pricing that could forever change the game and business of golf
It might be the most revolutionary idea to hit the golf business in years. And Chris Boos, director of golf operations for Forewinds Hospitality, speaks of it with all the fire and passion of a true believer.
“We’ve been doing dynamic pricing for about six years, long before GolfNow or any of the other third-party entities came into that space,” Boos explains. “Of course, like everybody else, we’ve done it through price and time of day. But now we’re attempting to get ahead of the other main driver that deters people from playing golf—time.”
Time and money have been at the top of the “problem” list in the game for years, with countless conferences and seminars addressing each. Unfortunately, few concrete solutions have been implemented until now.
“We’re selling tee times by the amount of time a customer wants to spend on the golf course,” Boos says matter-of-factly, outlining an idea so jarring that it takes a few minutes to digest. “By doing that, we think we will break down one of the main impediments to people playing golf.”
So how, exactly, does this work? It’s simple in practice, but extraordinarily complex in the preparation it took to get there. When a customer calls one of Forewinds’ two properties in Delaware—Deerfield in Newark (the old DuPont Country Club) or Garrisons Lake Golf Club in Smyrna—one of the first questions the staff asks is: “How long would you like the round to take?”
“In the beginning, most customers are going to say, ‘What do you mean, how long do I want to play?’” Boos says. “But that’s how we start a conversation and an education process. If the customer doesn’t have that opportunity to tell us what an acceptable time limit is, they can’t be held responsible for the time they spend out there. But if the customer is part of the process of telling us what his [or her] acceptable time limit is, all we’re doing is holding him [or her] to that time.
“That makes a lot of situations in public golf different because [slow play] isn’t a negative interaction at that point,” he adds. “It’s just our expectation of you and your expectation of us. Your expectation is that you can play in three-hours-and-45 minutes and our expectation of you is the same thing.
“We understand that there are ebbs and flows in rounds and you’re going to be five minutes behind at times, but getting back in position is part of the expectation process.”
This isn’t an idea Boos threw out on a whim. He spent two years researching, accumulating and analyzing data, training staff, and running beta tests with his annual pass-holders.
“I know, for example, that I can put three people out who are single-digit handicappers and they can play in just under three hours,” Boos says. “And three 15-handicappers, fast players, can play in three-and-a-half on the number.
“I know that our first hole, a par-5, takes the average threesome of 18- to 20-handicappers 14 minutes to play,” he continues. “Our second hole is a par-3 and it takes nine minutes to play that. But there are golf courses in our market shoving people out at seven- and eight-minute intervals. If we did eight-minute tee times, the math tells you that you’re going to be backed up on the second tee. And you haven’t done anything other than put people out on the golf course.”
By adjusting intervals between tee times and leaving times open, Boos is blocking his tee sheets into three-and-a-half-hour, four-hour, and four-and-a-half hour times.
“To play in three-and-a-half hours, your per-hole time is obviously faster than the person playing in four- or four-and-a-half hours,” Boos explains. “So we would need to have enough space ahead of you to accommodate you. There’s a value in that. There are a lot of people for whom that round in that time frame is more valuable than a round that is much slower. So there is an opportunity to buy that faster round at a premium. There are plenty of individuals who would pay $10 more for a round of golf if they can play in three-and-a-half hours on a Saturday morning and be back home before the family wakes up.”
The training and dynamics of managing that plan are far from easy. For example, Boos knows that the average interaction with a cart attendant who isn’t properly trained is between three and five minutes. If a group sees the cart attendant five times, that’s an additional 18 to 25 minutes per round.
“It’s just math and knowing what you can and can’t do with the tee sheet,” he says. “Unfortunately, software hasn’t caught up to that idea yet, but we’re very close. There’s nothing to say that people can’t play Deerfield in three hours. And there’s nothing to say that the person who wants to play in four-and-a-half hours doesn’t have a place at our facility. We want to accommodate all of those players, communicate with them, make them part of the process, and structure our tee sheet and yield management accordingly.”
The program launched the first of May, so Boos doesn’t have enough data to determine its success. And he knows there will be tweaks along the way. “There are definite holes in this,” he says. “There are times when it won’t work; times when you don’t have or can’t block enough space. There are times where you can’t throw a three-and-a-half-hour group out because the rest of your sheet has four-and-a-half-hour players. But that’s why we have to be good at math. Maybe we can accommodate that three-and-a-half-hour player at a different time.”
If it works, this concept could revolutionize public golf by eliminating one of the game’s greatest barriers to entry. And Boos knows it.
“We’re a small management company,” he says. “But this is a much, much bigger idea.”
Steve Eubanks is an Atlanta-based freelance writer and New York Times bestselling author.