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Entry fees tumble as clubs battle to make the cut

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Even the quickest glance through the Irish Examiner’s revealing survey of Irish golf clubs will confirm these are times as tough for them as any sector of this country’s still fragile economy.

By Simon Lewis
Yet like many, the golf industry is fighting tooth and nail to keep its head above water. What this straw poll reveals is that different clubs are finding different ways survive.

But one of the common themes appears to be that the era of the entry fee to golf club memberships is coming to an end. Even those that are still charging new members to join their clubs are doing so at considerably lower amounts than they were at the height of the Celtic Tiger boom.

Retaining members is still the biggest worry for courses across the country but some clubs are finding that doing away with entrance fees is actually encouraging new members through the front gates and into their clubhouses.

Christy O’Connor Jnr designed the Galway Bay Golf Resort and was instrumental in putting it on the map in the early 1990s before returning to the Seniors Tour and winning back-to-back British Senior Opens. He redeveloped his Renville Peninsula layout in 2006 and despite the current economic downturn O’Connor has seen a more attractive fee structure and abolition of the joining fee actually bring in 70 new members with 20 more on the waiting list.

“That’s fantastic and it came because there’s no entrance fee any more and the [annual] fee is very accessible with members able to pay quarterly or yearly, whichever way they like,” O’Connor said, his views echoing many heard in the survey.

It certainly is a trend, highlighted most starkly by the news two weeks ago of the K Club waiving its €80,000 entrance fee to potential new members who have been introduced by current ones while even those without connections could, for a limited time, become a member at the course which staged the Ryder Cup in 2006 for €1,900 a year with an initial joining fee of just €500.

Easier payment terms are having positive effects for clubs up and down the country but the removal of joining fees is the most prevalent plus point of the survey.

Yet some clubs are standing firm and going against the trend to do away with entry fees. The survey shows both Dromoland Castle G&CC in Clare and Fota Island Resort in Cork are still asking for a €5,000 joining fees, albeit both clubs having reduced that price considerably in keeping with the economic climate.

“I suppose our own feeling would be that if you take it away, you’ll never get it back,” Dromoland’s general manager and club pro David Foley said.

“No one’s doing brilliant at the moment but when we’re in a place where we need a block of [new] members it will be time to move. At the moment we’re not. Unless we’re going into the area of needing to get 50 or a 100 new members in to get to a 1,000, say, but we only ever had 600 and we’re at 500 at the moment.

“We’ve come up and down a lot over the last three years but we’re back up within 100 of that now so, fingers crossed.”

Fota’s marketing director Séamus Leahy also subscribes to the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ school of thought.

“We feel we’ve a premium product and that a joining fee is still appropriate, albeit in keeping with the current market place as well,” Leahy said.

“So we’ve come down [in the joining fee], too and thankfully our membership is very vibrant. We’ve had a lot of turnover in the last two or three years as well and that keeps the club healthy and fresh.

“Getting new members, young players coming in and women players coming in, is important to keep any club up and running and fresh.”

Joining fee or not, that would be something all members of Ireland’s golf industry would subscribe to.”

© Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved

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