Enhancing Club Value and Success by Wisely Investing in the Right Club Facilities!

Over the last ten years, we have seen an explosion in reinvestment in club facilities. And the results have been growing memberships, much higher club satisfaction and a more comprehensive approach to planning, maintaining and adding club facilities.

Today we are finding clubs finally understanding the need to fund facility depreciation as they wear-out. They are inserting depreciation expenses into their operating budgets. We are seeing clubs approaching facility improvements, not as one-off projects, but as those driven by overall strategic plans. Clubs are developing membership, financial and facility goals before trying to build quick-fix projects. The results are overall master plans being developed which let clubs plan ahead and allow for prioritized improvement plans that provide the most important projects being built first, thus driving maximum member satisfaction and club performance.

The Results From Wise Planning and Investing

Clubs are increasing their investments in depreciating facilities as historically they have been ignoring real maintenance costs. The results are better facilities and fewer deferred maintenance assessments. Clubs are also planning ahead for cyclical facility improvements so there is a more orderly and long-range strategy for doing them. The club facility master plan is guiding immediate and long-range projects. Based on McMahon Group’s almost forty-years of planning, approving and building club facilities, we find most clubs are on ten-year cycles for doing major facility projects, those that are above and beyond necessary maintenance repair and refurbishment projects. These major projects are required to address changing marketplace conditions affecting member usage and societal issues necessary to keep a club current.

These ten-year cycle projects are what keep club’s continually attracting new members and remaining financially viable. Without them, clubs begin to attract fewer new members while normal membership attrition continues unabated. You can’t stop mother nature.

But to plan future facility projects, we need the comprehensive master plan for all club facilities to guide today’s and tomorrow’s project. This master planning with costs also allows forward facility budgeting so funding is not the big challenge it is today for most clubs.

The results from planning and adding facilities per a club’s strategic master planning are:

• Properly upgraded club dining areas are resulting in 20% to 30% more-member dining usage.
• Club managers rate improved club facilities as the most successful way to attract new members.
• Well run clubs and well provided facilities drive members’ overall satisfaction with their clubs to the stratosphere of having over 50% of all members rating their club satisfaction as “very satisfied”. Clubs with over 50% of members being “very satisfied”, have full memberships. Full membership paying dues and initiation fees that provide the capital to properly maintain facilities and programs which make clubs great. How many clubs do we have that don’t have full memberships, but could, if they offered a better club product?