Play Golf Kelowna – since 1999

After 17 golf seasons of being one of the central contributors to the Play Golf Kelowna collective, one of the biggest surprises to people is to learn that Play Golf Kelowna is not a business, or any kind of legal entity at all.

In the fall of 1998, the concept was born when I sat down with two other golf course General Managers in Kelowna: the very recently retired Dan Weddell (Shadow Ridge), and the long since retired Neal Stead (Sunset Ranch). We wanted to simply save a few bucks on marketing by not fighting with one another, and to introduce some flexible, multi-course golf packages for the Kelowna golf market.

We started as ‘Golf Kelowna,’ but we started without Sunset Ranch as they changed their mind on being part of it. The original group of three courses was Kelowna Springs, Shadow Ridge and Shannon Lake. No employees, and no bank account. We were just three independently, locally owned golf courses who agreed to try some creative marketing together – we had no formal business plan, and no measurable expectations. We ‘winged it.’ We sold $58,000 of packages that first season, and each course had ponied up $10,000 to get the marketing ball rolling. The return on investment was not looking stellar.

For our first few years, we used simple, paper ‘punch cards’ to track the play… as an example, the original ’10 pack’ included 3 rounds at each course, and 1 ‘flex’ round you could play anywhere. Even with no technology, our sales grew quickly – it was evident people liked the idea of getting fair green fee rates at a variety of courses.

Our first breakthrough came in about 2004 when we found an on-line, multi-location gift card partner – Gava Systems out of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. This allowed us to use a common ‘portal’ and gift card technology to link our independent businesses for tracking and accounting purposes. We introduced the slogan ‘you pick where you play’ and annual sales rose into the $500,000 range quickly. This technology is common now, but it wasn’t at the time. The only other options were to use the large credit card companies, but they would charge us a fee for every transaction. With Gava, we had a predictable, flat annual fee. This let us keep the attractive green fee rates as low as we reasonably could.

Our next big change came in 2011 – Sunset Ranch & Two Eagles brought the golf course count to five, and we also added some local driving ranges as well for additional redemption options. We re-branded ourselves Play Golf Kelowna because we gave the Golf Kelowna web domain to Tourism Kelowna.

By this time, our annual sales had grown to more than one million dollars each season. Our primary product lineup had stayed the same since we introduced the ‘you pick where you play’ access. Our 1999 original ’10 pack’ had become the Now & Again Golfer Value Card, our original ’20 pack’ has been called the Frequent Golfer Value Card, and the original ’40 pack’ has been dubbed the Addicted Golfer Value Card. Our marketing has constantly dangled the simple question – which golfer are you? Now & Again, Frequent or Addicted? We wanted to have a package to suit everyone’s golfing habits!