Membership Costs!!

[Tommo21]

My club is £590 per year, but they are doing an offer at the moment of 15 months membership for the price of 12. Not too bad I think.

Think about it, year after year members pay for 12 months, but a new member gets three months free. I personally don’t think that fair to the long term members. Clubs seem so tied up it trying to attract new members with schemes like that, would they not be better directing some effort to keeping or finding out why some members leave in the first place.

I have my fees to pay at Royal Musselburgh before the end of this month. If I don’t pay I am deemed to have let my membership laps, that’s fine. BUT, there is no questionnaire or return form asking your reasons if you don’t intend rejoining. So if they loose say 40 members, they have no idea as to why, not officially anyway. I find that very strange, in fact, that amount never rejoined a few years back and they answered that by having an open weekend where you could come along and be a member with the joining fee of £1. I see that as reactive not proactive.

 

[patricks148]

but generally their living costs are lower and the prices of property compared with london is pennies, so phoooey, its bare no comparrison

The only thing i can think of is taxation and business rates for south east england being different and no comparable. It seems common around here that although the club house and maybe 2/3 holes are owned by the course alot of the land clubs use is still council owned. Shirley park would be a prime example. a members only course just outside croydon central. subs are around the £1400 mark per year, joining fee, no green fee's at weekends, and as far as im aware still no need to book tee times. Yet it turned out the clubhouse and car park aswell as the 1st and 18th are club owned, the rest of the course is leased from croydon council. they club were forced to raise teh new lease fund for 99 years which has been raised by the members. but i think in the south of england it would be suprising at to how many clubs still lease a percentage of their land

What rubbish cost of living is just as high if not higher.

We pay the same VAT, same food prices in some instances higher if you are in a remote area and fuel prices in much of Scotland are a far higher. I used to live in St Albans in Hertfordshire and my council tax was lower there than in Inverness. House prices are lower but so are wages in a lot of instances.

Much of Scotland outside the central belt is still largely rural and there are not the opportunities for high paying jobs. Some of the courses up here were built well over a hundred years ago on land that was not worth much except for grazing sheep./ Brora I believe still belongs to the Duke of Sutherland and allows golf and grazing as I imagine a lot of courses did when they stated out.

I would imagine that building a course in 1890 was far less than having to pay over inflated property costs in the south east where a lot of courses have been built recently.

Golf is still a game for everyone in Scotland, it doesn't have that middle class aspiration stuffiness element that some clubs still cling too . You can wear jeans at royal Dornoch for instance

If clubs tried putting prices up to the level they are in the south east not many people up here anyway would be able to afford to play.

The club I'm a member at only has about 250 members there are half a dozen other clubs within 10 miles who all charge about the same. they just about broke even last year but budgets are tight and I don't think the club employs more that 6 people so wages are not sky high.

I don't think the difference in cost between some parts of the country and others is just down to one reason. there must be many factors involved unfortunately I don't know all of them...

 

[USER1999]

Thing is though, the cost here (say a grand) isn't because that is what they want to charge, to keep golf middle class or what ever, it's what it costs to run the club. We don't make a profit. We have about 700 members, including ladies and kids, and the budget is set according to how much it's going to cost to run the club for a year.

It is clearly alot of money. Business rates must be a part of it, which will be more expensive around London, along with ground rent. All the labour rates will be higher, be it bar staff, kitchen staff, greens staff, cleaners etc.

Yes, we provide a house for the GM, and also the head GK, but if we didn't, we would have to pay them even more, or they would go somewhere else. These houses must have been paid for by now though. As a club, we have been around for about 120 years, so we weren't built yesterday.

 

[Lawrence22]

My club is £590 per year, but they are doing an offer at the moment of 15 months membership for the price of 12. Not too bad I think.

Castlereagh Hills Per chance?

im a member there myself.

Phil

No Greenacres just outside Ballyrobert.

 

[Lawrence22]

My club is £590 per year, but they are doing an offer at the moment of 15 months membership for the price of 12. Not too bad I think.

Think about it, year after year members pay for 12 months, but a new member gets three months free. I personally don’t think that fair to the long term members. Clubs seem so tied up it trying to attract new members with schemes like that, would they not be better directing some effort to keeping or finding out why some members leave in the first place.

I have my fees to pay at Royal Musselburgh before the end of this month. If I don’t pay I am deemed to have let my membership laps, that’s fine. BUT, there is no questionnaire or return form asking your reasons if you don’t intend rejoining. So if they loose say 40 members, they have no idea as to why, not officially anyway. I find that very strange, in fact, that amount never rejoined a few years back and they answered that by having an open weekend where you could come along and be a member with the joining fee of £1. I see that as reactive not proactive.

As far as I am aware the 3 months free applies to all members at our club not just new ones. As long as it is paid by a certain date. Can't remember date was advertised in clubhouse.

 

[Tommo21]

As far as I am aware the 3 months free applies to all members at our club not just new ones. As long as it is paid by a certain date. Can't remember date was advertised in clubhouse.

Would that mean the anniversary, when you pay the following years subs, runs an extra 3 months if it's for all members?

 

[Lawrence22]

As far as I am aware the 3 months free applies to all members at our club not just new ones. As long as it is paid by a certain date. Can't remember date was advertised in clubhouse.

Would that mean the anniversary, when you pay the following years subs, runs an extra 3 months if it's for all members?

I have no idea how it will work. Not all members will pay on time and will therefore remain on the same anniversry. My club is privately owned, not owned by the members and it therfore does some strange deals. For example I joined in September and payed pro rata for the rest of the year.
It is definately run more like a business than a club, probably suits the owners to have money coming in all year round.

 

[Speysider]

Just to make you lads down south even more envious, my fees this year have went up to £250!!

Get a caravan and come up for the summer, Boat of Garten