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Last week’s opinion article published by Golf Business WEEKLY referenced the use of a Voice AI system to answer calls and book tee times at golf courses. Rather than focusing on the ground-breaking AI technology that can potentially solve many of the problems golf course owners face, the article veered into a diatribe against “booking fees” – which were denounced as a bad practice that “smarter operators” would avoid. I would like to respond to several things that I believe deserve clarification and a rebuttal.
Disclaimer: Although it wasn’t directly stated in the column, the software that is referenced is something I am heavily involved in, and to my knowledge, is the only actively-working AI Voice booking system used at multiple courses in the US.
Many of you may know me through my involvement in both the NGCOA and PGA of America, as a course owner/operator and as Chief Operating Officer of Pinnacle Golf Properties in Charlotte, North Carolina. However, Manna Justin is a name you may not be familiar with in the golf industry. Manna has been involved in the technology side of golf for two decades. He has been my partner and a key figure in the development of PitchCRM, a marketing software that has proven to be very successful in helping golf courses automate their email marketing and messaging, thus improving their efficiency and profitability. Manna is also the founder of CourseRev.ai, another company in which we are partners and which has developed a revolutionary product that uses AI technology to answer calls, taking a huge burden off the golf course staff in booking tee times and handling informational calls at the course. We have been beta testing this cutting edge service at several of our courses, working to refine and improve it before a general release to the golf market. It is one of these course applications that was the subject of the article that focused on booking fees.
Great software is highly flexible, allowing the end user to run their business the way THEY choose to run it. We never try to shoe-horn an owner/operator into running their business the way we think it should be run. In order to meet these different needs, it is critical to design, implement and test these options to make sure they work.
We have been doing just that, testing every scenario we could think of, including charging booking fees. We have tested charging booking fees versus NOT charging booking fees. We have tested prepaid versus due-at-course and versions that include both.
In my opinion, conflating the technology with booking fees does a disservice both to the technology AND the topic of booking fees. Our technology does offer the ability for a course to charge a booking fee if they choose to do so. We believe that the individual golf course should be able to decide their own monetization policies without limitations from their software.
CourseRev’s Voice AI can take an immense load off your pro shop staff – think of it as having a highly trained staff person that can handle several hundred calls simultaneously, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. It comes with multiple benefits, all of which are illustrated here.
Voice AI is continually learning and improving on how it handles calls, and the future roadmap of our system includes powerful data analysis to help you maximize the revenue your facility is capable of producing. It is only going to get better at what it does.
As groundbreaking as this technology is, it does not come without a cost to the golf course, nor is it not reasonable to think that it should. How a golf course chooses to offset this cost is up to them. Thanks to our design and testing, booking fees are one real option – but certainly not a requirement.
Many businesses are finding unique ways to pass costs through to customers in the form of add-on fees. Credit card fees are a significant one. I disagree with the author’s opening statement that “airlines, hotels and rental cars don’t do it”. Airlines, in particular, play an active shell game in the fees that they charge and there is a very real strategy that is behind every one of those fees that most people don’t even realize. That is indeed a subject for another day, and I would be happy to dive deeper into that can of worms.
AI is by far the hottest topic in technology, with people on both sides of the “For” and “Against” argument. The industry is moving very fast, and I’m noticing early adopters are quickly reaping the rewards of using these tools in the right way. For now, my feeling is that the question of “should I charge booking fees at my course” should be separate from “can AI improve the efficiency and profitability of my golf course.” Both are questions you need to answer for yourself, and I don’t think a “Yes” or “No” answer to either defines you as a “Smarter Operator”.
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