Sagacity Golf helped Bayou Oaks:
When I compared my old pricing system to Forecaddie, I can see the difference immediately. Where my old system would only look forward and discount because my occupancy was at 37%, Forecaddie will raise my rate because it knows my pace is good and beating where we’ve been historically.
– Brian Long, General Manager, Bayou Oaks at City Park
Bayou Oaks at City Park is a 36-hole public facility located in New Orleans. General Manager Brian Long recognized there was an opportunity to grow his green fee revenue for afternoon hours that were historically underutilized. With increased demand and strategic pricing control, his green fee revenue has more than tripled since using Sagacity’s Forecaddie pricing platform.
Demand-based pricing drives new revenue
Bayou Oaks had been using dynamic pricing from their tee sheet provider to change prices automatically based on a set of complex rules. What Brian discovered was the technology was looking only at what the tee sheet had on the books and not factoring in remaining time until the day of play and expected pickup. The pricing changes were discounting hours too early and leaving money on the table.
Sagacity’s Forecaddie platform changed all of that. The Forecaddie pricing system incorporates TruDemand technology that makes price changes in real-time depending on actual demand and expected pickup.
When demand is behind historical pace, Forecaddie’s Daily Deals widget takes over and strategically promotes only the hours of the day where the course is behind pace and, more importantly, only enough rounds to get the course back on pace. This allows the course to avoid over-discounting. The Forecaddie widget continually looks at the tee sheet and adds or removes tee times from the widget automatically.
Launching Forecaddie was easy, and no technology changes were needed. Forecaddie integrates with EZLinks, so the course was able to keep its existing tee sheet and booking engine. Since launching the widget in 2019, Brian has noticed that afternoon revenue has more than tripled and he is seeing more new golfers than ever before.
There’s been a few times where a group comes to us and they need a really low rate and we are sure there’s no way we can do it. We’ll go into the group tool and see that actually; if we could get them into this time or this date, we could do that rate. That’s been helpful, I would say, to build our business.
Brian Long, General Manager
Bayou Oaks uses the Sagacity Golf Group Calculator to instantly reveal the best price range for any group.
Power Pricing Tools Boost Revenue
Bayou Oaks has a strong group business and maximizing group revenue is a priority. Creating quotes in the past would require time to look up last year’s rates, pull reports, crunch numbers, and have them reviewed for approval. In many cases, groups would come to the course seeking a rate that didn’t seem like it would pencil out and make financial sense.
With Sagacity Golf’s Group calculator, the team can enter a date in the future so the revenue from the proposed group can be analyzed instantly. An entire week is displayed at a glance, so it is very easy to see the impact of moving the group to a different day or to start at a different time of day. What used to take an hour now takes seconds. The Bayou Oaks team fills in the dates and group size and gets an accurate break-even price to start the quoting process.
In addition to the group calculator, Bayou Oaks uses Price Check to set rates and Power Hours to identify their most profitable hours of the day. All of the Sagacity Power Pricing Tools combine to give Bayou Oaks a never before seen window into their course’s performance.