Groupon, what are your thoughts?

Golfmmad

Golfmmad

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A round of golf for a fourball - £20, includes a pull trolley each, usual cost for trolley £3, at my club with Groupon.

The Club takes £10 and Groupon £10.

What do you think, good business sense, £10 is better than £0 and possible money spent in Club house and Pro shop?

Some of the members are complaining. Personally, it doesn't really bother me, even though I pay £680 membership fee I can play any time I like which would equate to less than £5 a round if I wanted to.

I've heard that some businesses are suffering with Groupon, such as Restaurants. Stories of punters turning up in great numbers, having their meals, drinking only water and leaving the restaurant running at a loss.

What do you think?
 
So, assuming that the trolley is coming from the pro shop, he'll be after a cut for each trolley he hires out surely. Even if that's just £1 that leaves the club with £6 for a fourball. You'll also see a vastly differing cross section of the golfing public on an offer like this. Makes for some interesting situations out on the course IMO.

Your club would be best to try and entice these golfers back on a similar deal in the future and cut out the Groupon middleman. Maybe make a little more money that way.
 
Depends on why the club signs up for the scheme. If the idea is to get people playing the course in the hope that it will attract new members then I think that it is a bit imprecise. I thnk the club would get more out of locally advertised trial rounds that are played with members who can then sell the club or through open days.


If they are meant to attract revenue then it is OK but, again, something that could be done better and raise more income for the club if they arranged it themselves.

The club also needs to be very careful that it gets the limitations correct as failure to do so can result in financial loss or really annoying the members.


To my mind, the success of schemes such as Groupon, Direct Tee Times, 2fore1 and the luck are all down to clubs lacking the experience or being too lazy to work on pricing and marketing themselves. Clubs could sell cheaper tee times at quiet times, give group discounts, offer 2 for 1 schemes etc themselves but they do not. If they did then they would have control and receive all of the money but instead they hand over the control and half or more of the revenue to a third party.
 
From everything I have seen so far, Groupon is good for Groupon (all the time) for the consumer (most of the time) and good for the business (almost never).

The business get such a small share of an already heavily discounted price that in a high proportion of situs the product/service is beng offered at a loss or at best breakeven, the only success really comes if it generates repeat business at full price, and currently there appears to be little evidence that these deals do so.

I know of a couple of golf clubs where there has been a big falling out between mgmt and members over Groupon deals - surely there are better ways for these clubs to offer targetted promotions at discounted prices that they retain more of the price from and create more repeat business, using Groupon or similar strikes me as the club being lazy in terms of promoting its business
 
If the club have any sense whatsoever, they'll get player's email addresses when they sign in (if they haven't got them already via Groupon) then if they want to do another cheapie they can email players direct without Groupon taking a cut.
 
Groupon are just parasites and will milk every last ounce from their "victims". I pity any business that gets involved with them. I will admit that my daughter took advantage of one of their offers to have her hair done on the cheap for prom night last year. She never used that hairdresser before and will not ever again, but instead of over £100 for the hair-do it cost her (me in reality) £29.

As said previously; fantastic for Groupon, good for customer, and absolutely lousy for the business concerned.
 
Region3 said:
If the club have any sense whatsoever, they'll get player's email addresses when they sign in (if they haven't got them already via Groupon) then if they want to do another cheapie they can email players direct without Groupon taking a cut.
Click to expand...

I'm sure the Pro does just that Gary. He uses the internet/e-mail quite a lot to promote the business. :)

For instance, one of my brothers booked a tee time online in the summer and has since received an e-mail from the club, (before Groupon) later in the year with a reduced green fee offer. Which my Brother did take up a couple of times.

As has been said, the deal is good for Groupon and some Clubs have been known to complain about 2 for one vouchers, which seem to be a good deal now!

I think it's all about increasing their database.
 
I think it's a good thing and I've used a few for cheap rounds of golf at courses I didn't know about or wouldn't have normally visited.

Yes groupon gets a massive share of the money but a business knows this before they sign up to it and if they can't be arsed to do their own promotions/special offers then they can't complain.
 
I've used groupon as a business and it's never going to make big bucks for us, but the value of 1500 people's names, numbers and email addresses is priceless! I'm sure you members would disagree with your club spending hundreds on customer data files.

As a golfer I buy any groupon for any local course, the way I see it is they must be desperate for the extra footfall and spend In the bar or pro shop! This says that there members are not playing their part!

Every time I've played a groupon deal I've had better service in the bar! Better info and advice from the pro than I've had at many places! I've even taken a 1/2 season membership at one club to try it out! And opted for many additional deals offered by the club! Most clubs I've spoke to have over achieved on expected new memberships! Surely this is a good thing?

Another thing! Almost every time I've played the courses have been dead! Less than 10 people out!

With membership numbers decreasing year on year clubs are changing and groupon is just one of the ways it's doing it.
 
I used it for the first time over Christmas. My internet security package was up, Mcaffee wanted £39 for another years subscription. Groupon had a deal on with Panda security, 5 years subscription, anti-virus and firewall complete for £9.00. Yes only £9.00, I snapped it up after checking out the review of Panda security. I should get it tonight after 8pm. Now that is a proper bargain.
 
I can't stand the whole idea.

With things like this, I guess it's up to the customer (end purchaser/user) to decide for themselves if the offers are worth taking up. And, up to the business if they want to use it.

Personally, I find it all a bit distasteful.......and there's no shortage of horror stories.
 
Our club sold about 100 of these offers last year and ended up with 9 new members out of it, so the manager pretty much justified his decision in selling them.

I think the club got £3 per player but nearly £9k in new membership fees.

That said I think there should be restrictions on when play is allowed as there was a few times play was very slow behind these Groupon deals.
 
I think groupon is great. I've bought a few golf deals on there. If it saves me money then i'm happy. My mrs always gets the deals to get her hair done too plus we have got a few good restraunt deals.
 
Stuart_C said:
Our club sold about 100 of these offers last year and ended up with 9 new members out of it, so the manager pretty much justified his decision in selling them.

I think the club got £3 per player but nearly £9k in new membership fees.

That said I think there should be restrictions on when play is allowed as there was a few times play was very slow behind these Groupon deals.
Click to expand...

Top shout by Steve then. I know that since they have advertised in the link magazine that that has also been succesful.
 
I thought I'd bring this thread back to the top of the board rather than start a new one on the subject of Groupon - is it the minority who think this scheme is just bad for golf club members?

I am at a proprietorship club and last summer the management flirted with a two week trial when we allowed Groupon bookings, and most of the members were up in arms. As has already been suggested here, the income generated for the club is minimal, and surely has to be weighed off against the largely awful behaviour of some Groupon "clients".

Now I'm certainly not going to tar all Groupon customers with the same brush, as I've only come across them on half a dozen or so occasions, but without exception I have found that they are largely individuals who have a set of golf clubs in the garage which they dust off once or twice a year - they are not golfers.

Consequently I have tended to find that not only do they have little idea how to play the game, they have even less idea about how to behave on the course. We have found them largely very slow, reluctant to call players through, and they have little respect for the course or others on it. Bunkers do not get raked, pitchmarks are not repaired and I have even seen buggies driven onto tees.

I accept there are regular golfers out there who lack etiquette and respect for the course, but if the stories I am hearing about Groupon bookings at our place are true, then the bookings are just more trouble than they are worth. We have had at least two groups asked to leave the course.

Unfortunately, having binned the trial last year we are now accepting Groupon bookings again, and there are dozens expected in the coming weeks. I played behind a 2-ball Groupon pair this morning, and if it is a sign of things to come we are in for some painfully slow rounds of golf in the coming months. They were aged in their 30's, so young blokes, and despite having a buggy by the 4th they had lost a clear hole on the 4-ball of seniors ahead of them. That should tell you all you need to know about how clueless they were. I was eventually asked through at half way, having been out for 2 1/2 hours.

It's our AGM this week, and the question is going to be asked whether we see enough revenue from these bookings to justify them. I'll be interested to hear the answer.
 
but without exception I have found that they are largely individuals who have a set of golf clubs in the garage which they dust off once or twice a year - they are not golfers

Personally I think this statement is garbage. Myself, and a lot of other golfers who are club golfers, many that are single figures, buy vouchers from Groupon as a way of trying new courses. I have a voucher to use for Mentmore still and will buy through Groupon if i think its a decent deal. Yes there are some that fit your description but it is by no means all or even most imo (i expect you probably dont realise those who are there through Groupon but are proper golfers with decent etiquette).

As Ive said on this subject before, I think for the customer they can be a great deal (if you know what you are getting and read the small print) but rarely are they a decent deal for the business, unless somehow it brings in decent levels of repeat business, which invariably these deals don't.
 
fundy said:
Personally I think this statement is garbage.
Click to expand...

I beg your pardon?! Have you played with me on the occasions I have played behind these individuals? No, I thought not! So how can you possibly say that my observations, based on my experiences, are "garbage"? You can't.

If you must quote me, perhaps you would do so in context - what I said was that I was by no means tarring all Groupon clients with the same brush. I was commenting on my limited experience of them.

It may well be others have good experiences of groupon bookings - that's why I asked for the opinions of others here. But I would ask you not to dismiss my comments as "garbage" when you have not been present on the occasions I am referring to.

Unless of course you have been part of the bookings I have come across, or have been lurking behind trees spying on me.........
 
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