Golf courses in most cases, especially association courses, are set up to break even. Often the business plan is based on a certain number of members (for an average 18-hole course around 800) and recurring costs with Maintenance and staff being the largest expense items. This setup has worked fine in recent years as there was no shortage of people wanting to join a course. Now that in recent years a ‘new’ type of golfer is emerging who is not so quick to commit to a golf course and moreover the number of rounds offered in the Netherlands has increased spectacularly (130 golf courses in the last 30 years), more and more courses are having problems financing their course. When somewhere 100 members leave, this results in an annual decline of 100,000 euros in income….
In addition, many clubs rent their course from an owner who also expects a certain return, often these calculations are also based on a certain fixed number of paying club members, here too challenges arise when this declines.
Finally, annually 3 to 5 courses in the Netherlands run into financial problems that in extreme cases can even lead to bankruptcy or a takeover. With Golfimprovements, we want to prevent this by addressing the problems before they become insoluble. We can think of other lease contracts with the owner of the course, other sources of income to tap into, smart planning of deployment of staff and equipment and support in negotiating long-term contracts in the field of maintenance, purchase rental of equipment, and other matters.