By Harvey Silverman, Contributor, Golf Business | Silverback Golf Marketing
We could say it’s late to the party. After all, for years, Google has enabled a long list of businesses to make it easy for customers to make reservations for everything from hotels to doctors, plumbers, and many more from the business’s search page:
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Service-Based Businesses: Such as hair salons, spas, beauty parlors, massage therapists, personal trainers, tutors, and pet groomers.
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Healthcare Providers: Including doctors, dentists, chiropractors, psychologists, and other medical professionals.
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Hospitality Businesses: Such as hotels, bed and breakfasts, and vacation rentals.
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Restaurants: For making reservations and managing waitlists (more on waitlists below).
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Tour and Activity Providers: Such as tour operators, guides, and recreational activity providers.
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Event Venues: Including conference centers, banquet halls, and wedding venues.
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Fitness Businesses: Including gyms, yoga studios, and fitness classes.
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Home Services: Such as plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, and contractors.
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Professional Services: Such as lawyers, accountants, consultants, and real estate agents.
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Educational Institutions: Such as schools, colleges, and training centers offering classes or workshops.
And now, golf. Imagine someone at Google scanning reams of data and seeing a four-year uptick for searches like “find a tee time near me” or “find a golf course near me.”
“Holy cow,” the scanner (probably an intern) exclaims. “These people are searching worldwide for golf but cannot make a reservation without going elsewhere. We need to connect to golf.” Now, that’s real intelligence, not artificial.
And connect it has, first with GolfNow, which set off alarm bells at NGCOA HQ. Suddenly, members who are on the GolfNow platform (should they be?) saw a button on their Google profile that looks like this:
Clicking the button takes people directly to the course’s GolfNow tee time listing and booking page – but not to the course website. Something in the GolfNow + golf course client agreement allows GolfNow to distribute tee times through other channels. I bet I can count on two hands how many course operators knew this and have a couple of fingers left over. GolfNow’s mistake was not alerting its clients of this new development and avoiding the shock and consternation many members expressed to NGCOA CEO Jay Karen.
Another golf media outlet said this “is a matter that demands immediate attention.”
Who better than the NGCOA to meet that demand? (Yes, that’s a self-serving statement – but who else would do this?) So, Karen quickly connected with a GMS executive that had arranged a conversation with a Google executive.
What he learned first puts to rest that this was a Google-GolfNow plot. Google desires to connect with every golf course as part of its “Reserve with Google” capability. Golf will be added to the list at the top of this article. Google will soon enable individual golf courses to place and enjoy the benefits of the blue “Book Online” button on their information panel, but will be required to work with an aggregator, such as a GMS company, to make it happen.
Golf course owners and operators will have the choice to add the blue button, or not. There are also certainly updates coming in terms of GMS companies, APIs, and things of that nature. But that’s another story for another day.
From what Karen understands, through the help of a GMS or aggregator, courses will be able to add a direct booking link behind the “Book Online” button. Because Google allows local businesses to remove third-party links on their Google Business Profile pages, golf courses will be able to select which links tie to that button (and which don’t). Provided its GMS company cooperates, the GolfNow link can be suppressed in favor of the course website booking engine, directing the golfer to where you want them to book. That’s hugely important.
By the way, there is already a way to add a booking link to your Google information panel, but it is hard to find and not apparent, like the big blue button. It’s under “Appointments,” as in the image below:
Also, Karen was told that no money is changing hands between Google and GolfNow, nor would there be with the cooperating GMS companies, with regard to the current “book online” button. However, one can speculate that Google sees a way to better place ads in front of a prized demographic – golfers. We’ll wait to see how this plays out in the future.
In the meantime, Jay Karen is summoning leaders in the GMS space to a virtual meeting next week to brief them on his discussion with Google and how he thinks the audience should respond. We’ll follow up with another article to articulate the path forward. To paraphrase Detective Steve McGarrett, “Book ‘em, Google.”