Case study | Why The Vines Resort and Country Club made the switch to points
Posted: 3rd August 2017 in App feed, Case Study, Latest news, Lifestyle, MiClub Golf
A very modern club membership model
The Vines Resort and Country Club, located 35 minutes from the Perth CBD, provides members with full resort facilities, including squash and tennis courts, fully equipped gymnasium, swimming pools and 36 golf holes. Despite being a popular club, management knew potential new members needed something more.
The issue
“Today’s golfer demands more flexibility to play our courses, and they have a broader range of time slots available to them to play, due to more home-based businesses, elastic work hours, and a growing number of shift workers,” explained Scott Meiklejohn, Club Manager.
With this change in golfers’ circumstances and the changing demographic of the surrounding area, The Vines sought a new model that balanced a members’ value for money with a time poor lifestyle.
“Being a resort course we allow public play. We needed a membership structure that would encourage people to join The Vines as a member,” added Scott.
The approach
The Club responded to these changing requirements by completely replacing the existing membership structure with three categories, all of which are credit points based, a more modern, flexible style of membership.
The Club adjusted the conditions and credit rates for each of these new categories, named Full Membership, Flexi Membership and Casual Membership.
“Members are able to choose the times and prices that suit their needs. If you are able to play on a quiet Monday afternoon, you will use less points than if you want to play in a demand peak time such as Saturday or Sunday mornings,” Scott explained.
The Full Membership category offers a more traditional membership, with full access to all golf and resort facilities. This is, in effect, an unlimited credit category, as the Club felt members paying full fees should receive unlimited golf.
All members have unlimited use of non-golfing resort facilities and discounts across dining, accommodation, pro shop and spa facilities.
While Full Membership has unlimited golf booking access, the club has calculated the points for games in peak and off-peak times for the Flexi and Casual members.
Flexi members start their membership with 200 credits, while Casual have 100 credits.
Additional blocks of credits can be purchased.
How The Vines calculated the rates
| Members‘ rates | ||
| 18 holes | 9 holes | |
| Off peak: Monday-Friday (all day) & Saturday/Sunday (after 11am) on both courses | 2 credits | 1 credits |
| Peak: Weekend Members competitions and Saturday/Sunday (before 11am) on both courses | 5 credits | 3 credits |
| Reciprocal: | 3 credits | 2 credits |
Other variations between categories
The three membership categories have variations in other benefits too, for example Full Membership can book eight days in advance for members’ competition rounds, while Flexi members can book eight days in advance for weekday competitions and five days in advance for weekend competitions. Casual members can then book three days in advance for competition rounds.
Communication to existing members
All existing members will be asked to choose from one of the three membership categories. Communication to members has been via email, an Information Evening and then a vote at an EGM. This approach ensured members were well informed and had a chance to provide feedback.
The results
The change to membership categories was approved by members in March and was well received by the majority.
There was a smooth implementation of the new categories with MiClub’s team assisting throughout the process.
“We took care to ensure the operational elements were managed correctly, which included moving Pay4Play and Lifestyle modules through MiClub,” explained Scott.
The credit-based membership opened to public in mid-April and is proving very effective, leading to 250 new members through until the end of November.
“We see credit based membership categories being the way of the future. Without MiClub’s Lifestyle Membership module we would have found it very difficult to implement this structure.”
Scott Meiklejohn, Vines Golf Resort, General Manager