Cape golf economy developing a slice
by James KinsellaThe local industry may need to adjust its stance if Cape Cod’s golf economy was a tee shot, it would be a slice into windy conditions.
After a decade of flashy growth, Cape courses are confronting a stagnant supply of golfers at the same time that 24 new competitors have opened within two hours of the peninsula.
Neighboring Plymouth County poses the most formidable threat, siphoning as much as 10 percent of previous golf traffic from the Cape and Islands. Plymouth is the fastest-growing golf community in the commonwealth, with about a dozen courses within easy access from Boston and Logan Airport. Its courses not only are newer, but also attract wealthy demographics and high-end housing construction along their fairways.
"It’s convenient to Boston," said Tom Martin, the owner of Tee Ball, a marketing firm based in Yarmouthport. "That’s a killer right there," especially for the Cape’s semiprivate courses that don’t have the cushion of municipal resident fees.
It doesn’t help that North Shore courses also are attracting golfers from Boston, said Geoff Converse, director of golf for the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, who hopes the Sagamore Bridge flyover now under construction will reduce the drive time for golfers coming to the Cape.
The situation is not a crisis, but it does require adjustments for a business that generates more than $350 million annually in direct and indirect spending on Cape Cod and the Islands, according to the St. Andrew’s Corporation. Courses are marketing more aggressively, keeping prices stable and moving rapidly to online and telephone reservation systems.
The dollars add up for Cape economy
Cape Cod may have developed its tourism reputation from beaches and boating, but golf has become a major player in its economy over the last 15 years. The Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce calculates 1.3 million rounds of golf played a year, a significant figure for a cold-weather location when compared with 4 million rounds a year at Myrtle Beach, S.C.
The money adds up fast: $60 greens fees at a public course on a summer weekend, with another $15 for a cart and $4 for a bucket of balls; then a foursome’s $150 to $200 dinner-and-drinks tab; and finally, a $150-a-night-double-occupancy stay at a local hotel.
The Heritage House in Hyannis is a perfect example of golf’s ripple effect on the Cape economy. Even though it is located at the intersection of Main Street and Old Colony Way – where tractor trailers and SUVs rush by all day long – the motel organizes package tours accounting for 8,000 to 10,000 rounds of golf each season at courses such as Ballymeade in North Falmouth, Cranberry Valley in Harwich and Ocean Edge in Brewster.
Heritage House owners Peter Martino and Jan Daale have been cultivating relationships with the courses since 1993, when they ran the American Host hotel in Yarmouth. The stays aren’t always cheap – a package with a high-end course can run $200 a night per person – but the Heritage House has no shortage of takers. "Basically, we customize our packages," Martino said. "We try to match them up to where they can play. We look at their handicap and the home course they play out of, and we put them on a course they’ll enjoy playing ... It’s been very successful."
Paul Shwarz and his partners in the West Yarmouth-based Dockside Hotel properties also have worked hard to tie golf into their marketing efforts. Their economy-class Town and Country, middle-range Mariner and more expensive Cape Point all offer golf packages priced to their respective clientele anywhere from $50 to $99.
Packages offering one night’s lodging plus one round of golf including cart at Quashnet Valley, Bass River, Bayberry Hills, Hyannis Golf Club or Captains are being marketed all off-season, with a $3 dining discount coupon. "It’s another way of selling the room," Shwarz said. "The relationship between motels looking for guests and golf courses looking for golfers is a very good marriage."
A search on Yahoo or Google will call up so many golf and accommodation packages for Cape Cod that a prospective visitor could spend half a day researching possibilities. But as important as golf may be for places like the Heritage House, the game plays an even more profound role for Cape Cod’s robust real estate market.
The golf courses are a constant lure for new retirees choosing the Cape over locales such as Florida and Arizona. Jody Shaw, director of operations at Ballymeade Realty, which is marketing the remaining unsold lots at the upscale development, said the golf course, along with such amenities as the clubhouse and tennis courts, draws prospective buyers.
"It brings it all together," said Shaw, who worked at Ballymeade after the Cape’s last recession in the early 1990s. He recalled when a lot of more than an acre could be had for $50,000. These days, that same lot cost $450,000. Single-family custom homes are available at Ballymeade anywhere from the high-$600,000 range up to $2.5 million to $3 million.
Bob Churchill, co-owner of Churchill-Leibert Buyer Brokers, said clients frequently raise the topic of golf, town-owned courses particularly. "They always are interested in what munis are available," he said. Prior to seeking a home on Cape Cod, many have played courses on the Cape. Golf also typically is a key draw for second-home owners, Churchill emphasized. "Golf is in the top three. It’s boating, golf and the beaches."
Marketing and pricing to keep the golfers coming
Slowly over the last few years golf’s popularity on the Cape has reached a plateau. Consider Clancy’s restaurant. Golfers still make the pilgrimage to the West Yarmouth eatery to celebrate after a day on the course. But eight years ago, said manager Scott Allen, the money really used to flow, with foursomes spending thousands of dollars on golf weekends. "We used to do a lot of package deals with hotels. We don’t do as many as we used to. A lot of people are going up to Plymouth."
Amy Surette Green, a partner at Martin Surette Realty in Dennis, is among many real estate brokers who report that golf is a waning draw in the summer rental market. Eight out of 10 renters come to the Cape for the beaches, she said, while only 20 percent play golf.
At the Captains Golf Course, a municipally owned 36-hole course in Brewster, more than 83,000 rounds of golf were played on the courses last year, reported its director of golf, Mark O’Brien. That is an increase of 3 percent over 2003, and he anticipates 2005 will generate numbers similar to last year. But while play by town residents was up 7 percent, guest play actually declined 2 percent.
That trend is nothing new, O’Brien said. "Our greens fee play has been on the decline," he said. To make up for it, resident golfers at many municipal courses are paying higher annual fees each year. Captains, which contributed $430,000 to Brewster’s general fund last year on revenues of $3.7 million, is raising its residential membership dues by $50 in 2005.
But trying to replace a visiting golfer with a slight increase in a municipal resident’s annual fee won’t wash. That is because the visiting golfer tends to spend more on trips to Cape Cod than the average leisure traveler – sometimes as much as 46 percent more. Golfers stay longer and plan farther in advance, they have median incomes exceeding $100,000 per year and spend as much as $7,500 annually on the sport, according to a survey conducted for the Cape Cod Golf Course Manager’s Association.
With signs of slippage, the Cape’s golf industry is paying more attention than ever to marketing and pricing.
The Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, which has spent about $80,000 annually over the past several years to promote golf, realizes its value to the local economy. Its efforts include the Cape Cod Golf Passport program, featuring premiums and discounts offered to golfers at most courses, except in the height of the summer season. About 400 passports were sold last year, with another 200 given away for charity fund-raisers.
Many courses also depend on Tee Ball’s Little Black Book of Golf, now in its 11th year, which forms the heart of the business’ marketing services. It publishes three times a year, distributing the guides free mainly across New England, with some finding their way into gift bags at nonprofit golf tournaments around the nation, courtesy of Tournament Promotions of Needham.
Owner Martin said the publication has an effective shelf life of four years, given the large number of course telephone numbers that it includes. A one-time, color, full-page ad in the publication goes for $3,080; a half-page horizontal ad costs $1,705. Preferred spaces carry higher costs: for example, $5,500 for the back cover.
But perhaps the most promising and cost-effective marketing tools are the Internet and online reservation systems. Not only are individual courses committing dollars to this strategy, but so are Tee Ball, a private Cape golf promotion firm, and the Cape chamber.
The Cape chamber is rolling out its service in early March; Tee Ball is less specific about its timing other to say it will be this spring. Both are using Golf Switch, which markets these systems. In mid-February, seven courses had signed up to participate in the chamber’s system, with two more courses pending; Tee Ball expects that 30 or more courses will be signing onto its system.
The beauty of the online system, as both Converse and Martin will tell you, is that it allows golfers to go online anytime, anywhere, to sign up for any tee times a course to makes available, and to use a credit card to secure the transaction. Converse said another prime market for the online system would be the Cape’s hotels. Currently consigned to making multiple telephone calls to find tee times for their golf package customers, the hotels would be able to discover and lock in those times far more easily.
The chamber plans to charge participating courses $3 per reservation, with $1.50 going to Golf Switch and $1.50 back into the chamber’s golf initiative.
Marketing may help prop up waning demand, but pricing helps too.
This season, courses are reluctant to raise prices much, if at all. The Captains Golf Course in Brewster, for example, has chosen not to increase its $60 peak-time greens fee this year.
Rates are staying the same at Olde Barnstable Fairgrounds in Barnstable ($40 for a resident, $60 for a non-resident), Dennis Highlands and Dennis Pines in Dennis ($55) and at Cranberry Valley in Harwich ($60).
The greens fees also have stayed the same at Bass River ($50) and Bayberry Hills in Yarmouth ($57.50), though the price of a cart is up 75 cents. At Sandwich Hollows in Sandwich, the greens fee is up $1, to $55 for a resident and $60 for a nonresident.
A sampling of private Cape courses also reveals price stability. Ocean Edge in Brewster and Quashnet Valley in Mashpee are staying flat at $80 and $60, respectively; Cape Cod Country Club in Falmouth is raising its rate $1 to $56; Hyannis Golf Course is raising its rate $2, to $62; and Brookside in Bourne is going up $5, to $65. The fees generally are about $5 or so higher since 2000, though Ocean Edge has not increased its fee in that time.
Despite the windy conditions, Arthur Ratsy, who is vice president of tourism for the Cape chamber, sees golf remaining a powerful and healthy force for the peninsula’s economy. It continues to play a "huge" role in attracting visitors to the Cape, and not just in the summer, he said. "In the spring and the fall, it means big business."
Golf will be a strong tool in Ratsy’s arsenal this year in efforts to draw what is expected to be a 5 percent to 7 percent increase in foreign tourists due to the lowered dollar. He recently spent two days at a Dublin trade show to talk up the Cape. When he tells them about the number of golf courses on the Cape, he hears back: "How many?" with a tinge of incredulity.
Markets such as Myrtle Beach will always tower over the Cape, but the chamber’s Converse said the trick is not to market directly against the south. "People seeking a comfortable round of golf – and prepared to travel for it – may want to golf in Georgia in February, but they’ll likely find the Cape a far more comfortable place to play in July," he said.
Despite a particularly harsh winter that has buried courses under inches, if not feet, of snow, Jeff Babineau, deputy editor of Golf Week magazine, said climate shouldn’t hold back efforts to market Cape Cod golf throughout the nation. The courses of Upper Michigan have a shorter season than the Cape, Babineau said, yet they have become famed among American golfers. The Cape won’t disappoint anyone who plays its courses, said Babineau. "I love that place."
But he did caution that the Cape’s golf industry has a long way to go building its reputation nationally. "All you have to do is get people in there, and golf will sell itself," Babineau said.
James Kinsella James Kinsella is former business editor of the Cape Cod Times and currently is on the staff of the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette. 
