Work in progress: Golf Trip Genius
On a recent golf trip with the Blue Elephants Golf Society, the director of competitions (me) tried out a relatively new golf travel site, GolfTripGenius.com.
There are some outstanding features. The “Pairings” feature alone makes the program a winner. I was able to schedule our entire group of 24 without any duplications; that is, I never played with the same guy twice.
GolfTripGenius was launched earlier this year, aiming at golf organizers (the holy grail, no?), resort and golf destination managers (who are looking for value-added features for their customers) and PGA professionals. “Powering these solutions,” says the company’s press release, “is the first-time use of operations research programming and advanced mathematical algorithms applied to commercial golf scheduling and tournament design problems. The resulting low cost, online products provide benefits that greatly enhance any golf trip experience.”
A recent promotional newsletter from GTG added:
With well-over 600 golf trips registered on GolfTripGenius.com, we’re seeing some interesting data about group golf trips. Not surprisingly, the most popular regions within the US during recent weeks are Florida and Myrtle Beach – with slightly more golfers headed to Florida. Most of the trips are “self-managed” (and include destinations like Scotland and Tasmania) and many are to golf resort destinations. The most frequented resorts so far? Bandon Dunes, Casa de Campo, Destination Kohler, Doral, Grand Cypress, Hammock Beach, Innisbrook, Kiawah, PGA National, Pinehurst, Reunion, Reynolds Plantation, TPC Sawgrass, Treetops and Wintergreen.
The most popular-size trip is 12 golfers (to be exact, 37% of all trips have 9 to 12 golfers). Close behind are trips with 8 or fewer golfers (33%). Thirteen to 16 golfers have accounted for 18% of the trips. Groups of 17 to 20 golfers represent 6%, and the same for 21 to 24 golfers.
Almost all these trips are scheduled for 3 to 6 rounds of golf. In fact, golfers teeing it up 3 to 6 times accounted for fully 85% of our trips. Golf groups playing 8, 9 or 10 rounds accounted for 15% of the registered trips. Some of these “trips” with larger numbers of rounds are actually golf leagues using the GTG Scheduler’s capabilities.
Not everything went smoothly with GTG for the Blue Elephants outing, but I was encouraged to try the system again for another event for which I head the competitions, The Shoal Creek Cup. GolfTripGenius worked like a charm. I set up the pairings, the tee times, the bets, the scoreboard. Then all I had to do was plug each individual’s scores on every hole, and the program did the rest. The GTG system computed gross scores, 2-man net better ball scores, 4-man 2 low net scores, individual net scores over three cumulative days. It kept a running scoreboard, including dollars won in our wagers, all computed with no extra help from me.
Like most very good web applications, GolfTripGenius keeps improving as it grows. An edit here, an enhanced feature there – each time I visit I feel it’s improved. Keep your eye on this one. If your resort is looking for a way to allow groups to help you manage them, it’s worth a look. If your golf travel business wants a real value add, this may be it. If your golf content website is looking for something sticky for your visitors, this is certainly worth consideration. And if you’ve long wondered how best to reach those odd ducks who tend to be the organizers for their golf groups, well, look no further.
Mark,
Nice entries this time on your “Recycling” effort. I do have a comment worth sharing. It is really the beginning of a potential bitch session…depending upon how many iPad users are reading. Reason: I’ve recently been growing increasingly frustrated with how Apple can continue to expect me to consider my iPad worth touting to others when I continually run into Flash driven websites where the iPad is rendered useless.
Of course, no sooner do I get to the Golf Trip Genius website that I find it’s driven by Flash!
Tell me, oh ingenious Apple user (and fellow Apple pusher), when, when, when can I start getting the most out of my iPad by being able to use it one the ubiquitous websites that are driven by Flash?
Posted by Glenn Prillaman on 07.01.10.Glenn, yes, it’s frustrating. Is it Apple or is it the short-minded web developers who insist on using Flash. We’re guilty. Your company’s website has Flash at its opening and throughout. So what do we do.
Flash just doesn’t work on mobile devices; I believe Jobs when he outlines his reasons. So maybe there are just some things we can’t do on some of our devices.
Posted by Mark on 07.02.10.Mark,
I agree with previous comment that this was one of the best “Recylced” in long time. Read all the items…ordered a copy of Art & Copy from PBS… love the idea of GTG, had not heard of such a program… but I’ll bet you can’t recite your company descrpition from memory between the first and 10th floors without sounding robotic. What you wrote is good and works for an email but face to face…??? Gotta be shorter and sweeter.
Keep up the the great work. Love your approach.
TS
Posted by Tom Stine on 07.06.10.Tom, so right. The elevator speech exercise was valuable, however, because it helped confirm our 3 floor version: “With fresh ideas about marketing and communications, Burris helps organizations build their brands.”
Posted by Mark on 08.08.10.