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‘I think the experience becomes more important than the golf course’
What do golfers value more, a great deal, or a great day out? At The PGA Partners’ Day, Nuno Sepulveda, co-CEO of Details Group, questioned the idea that players were merely money driven
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What is more important to golfers – price or experience? Logic might tell you players are always looking for value when they book a trip, or play a course, but Nuno Sepulveda is not so sure.
Speaking on GBQ Live, held in front of an audience at The PGA Partners’ Day at Slaley Hall, the co-CEO of Details Group and PGA Aroeira in Portugal, said he believed providing a great experience was the key to building customer loyalty.
Revealing that prices had more than doubled in the five years since the Covid pandemic – something that was “unthinkable” in 2020 – Sepulveda also stressed the importance of providing great service in an era of rising costs.
“We see tremendous growth, but it needs to be sustainable,” he explained. “I think the product needs to be there. There is an issue here when prices keep going up and people keep coming back. We need to give them the right product and the right service.
“And I think service is becoming one of the biggest things. Obviously, there are all these online ratings and it’s kind of a two-edged sword.
“You go to a restaurant, you check Tripadvisor. Golf is becoming the same. We have a bad comment and everybody goes bananas.
“On the same golf course, we have guys that just want to drink beers and other guys who want to have a serious golf round.
“To cater for everyone is an issue, but it needs to become an art. You can’t just standardise the whole thing.”
Sepulveda added that golf courses lacked data and needed to do more to collect it rather than just “opening the door, people walk through, and hopefully they’ll come back next year”.
He said: “Let them use tracer technology on the golf course but, at least in exchange, leave your data here. Give a bag tag with their name [on it] but collect the data so we can actually follow up the next day: ‘would you like to come back?’ A little bit like Disney does.
“I don’t want to be over-commercial, but we just cannot wait for next year to see the same client. We need to tackle the client the day after. We need to make sure they like what they had.
“I think clients are actually very loyal. There is an idea they are so money driven. I’m not sure. Obviously, there is always a segment, but there are a lot of people who like to be well taken care of, and they want to play nice golf courses and have a great experience.
“I think the experience becomes more important than the golf course. It’s the whole day – because it is becoming difficult for people to have time to play golf.
“It’s always been an issue. It’s four or five hours. If those five hours are great, it’s a great day. If those five hours are a nightmare, it’s a bad day.”
