Fore!mula For Success - Fore! Internet Premium - July 2009
Fore! Reservations can't guarantee year-round perfect weather. And, when it comes to the economy, we're not much help in orchestrating a quick economic rebound. However, if you are looking for an immediate increase in your rounds and revenue, we can help. With an upgrade to Fore! Internet Premium, you will have the power of the Internet driving customers to your course in an instant. With a projected 3,000,000 rounds booked using Fore! Internet Premium this year, courses are benefiting from functionality that ensures the online booking process is simple, easy, customer friendly - and most importantly - seamless.
"Our online bookings are up 115 percent this year over last year," says Dave Torbenson, Director of Golf for Spooner Golf Club, an 18-hole public course and PGA Family Course located in Spooner, WI. Over the past winter, Spooner revamped their website providing direct links on all pages, branding their site and making the site as interactive as possible. "We want to make our home page, our customers' home page, and Fore! Internet Premium allows us to do that." Click here to view Spooner's online tee time booking page.
Fore! Internet Premium provides course websites with the following features:
* Online Customer Profiles
* Internet Specials Calendar
* Fore! Marketing and a Birthday Club Sign Up Form
* Fore! Travel Golf
* General Mailing List Sign Up Form
* Framed Tee Time Booking Pages
* Customized Colors, Styles and Fonts
* Rules-Based Bookings and Booking Quantity Restrictions
With Fore! Internet Premium, courses maintain control of the booking process as well as integrate the features with their e-mail marketing tools. For Spooner Golf Club, this season marks the first year the course is offering Internet specials.
"We're very excited about the possibilities for the Internet specials and expect we're going to have a lot of momentum going through the season and see continued increases in rounds booked," Dave says.
One of the first specials Spooner offered this spring was a 10 percent off incentive for booking a tee time online. "It gets down to how much is an e-mail address worth to you and we got a big response right away, so I can definitely say it's worth that 10 percent," Dave explains. "Our database is getting bigger and people are coming to our website."
The opportunity to offer Internet specials is an especially valuable tool for courses experiencing lower than normal volume due to the economy. For Tatum Ridge Golf Links in Sarasota, FL e-mail blasts that promote Internet specials have helped generate additional customers during down periods such as the afternoons when the heat can keep players away. Tatum Ridge switched website providers this past April and now incorporate all Fore! Internet Premium features into their website. Since doing this, the course has seen great improvements in their web traffic and online bookings. Click here to view Tatum Ridge's Internet Specials Calendar.
"We ran a special for afternoon play for the cart fee, no green fees, and we saw an immediate increase from 15 rounds to 70 rounds," says Jerry Burton, Assistant Manager for the pro shop at Tatum Ridge. "In addition, our restaurant saw an additional $400 per day increase with food and beverage purchases during that time." Jerry explains that while the average drop-off in the Sarasota area has been around 15 percent, Tatum Ridge has been much less at 6 percent.
Since upgrading to Fore! Internet Premium, Hermitage Golf Course in Old Hickory, TN has seen 20 percent of their tee times booked online - over 30,000 total rounds. "It's been nothing but good for us," says Jim Vernon, Director of Golf at Hermitage. "In listening to our customers we found they really appreciate and like the ability to create a customer profile. Once they create the profile, the process is fast, easy and it cuts down on duplicate customers." Click here to view Hermitage's customer profile web page.
"We also really like the Internet Specials Calendar," Jim continues. "There is no third party tee-time seller involved. We can customize our page so everything looks like our site and customers know that everything that is happening is just for our customers right here at Hermitage Golf."
Hermitage, Tatum Ridge, and Spooner Golf Club use the Internet Specials Calendar to implement Fore! Reservations' "best price guarantee" philosophy that their customers know they can find the best possible rate at their website and nowhere else. This, along with the many beneficial features that Fore! Internet Premium offers can result in a stronger web presence for your facility while increasing your rounds and revenue.
If you need assistance integrating Fore! Internet Premium tools and links into your website contact our Marketing Support Team at 630-789-9783. To learn more about these features, click here to watch informational videos. To upgrade, please contact the Sales Team at 630-789-9705.
The next issues of Fore!mula for Success will feature the new Fore! Marketing product and Touch Screen Kiosk. If you have had success using these products we'd love to hear about it and include your course in an upcoming issue. Call us at 630-789-9705 or contact us via e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
