As we are close to entering a new season it is important to know how the Golf Industry is doing this year. According to the Golf Course Industry Magazine’s, State of the Industry 2018: The Great Reinvestment, the golf market is beginning to reshape. Golf Course Industry ran a SurveyMonkey poll during the last quarter of 2017 to gauge he overall fiscal condition of the turf maintenance side of the industry.
Over 450 superintendents across the US and Canada completed the survey. Here are the top 5 things to take away from this industry update.
- The average capital improvement budget for 2018 is $313,042, a nearly 100 percent jump from an average of $160,724 in 2012, according to the GCI survey. Stagnant facilities are anomalies, as 80 percent of superintendents report they are budgeting for capital improvements.”
- The average maintenance budget is storming toward $1 million. Thirty-three percent of the more than 450 superintendents who responded to the GCI survey reported non-capital operations budgets exceeding $1 million, bringing the average maintenance budget to $911,705, the highest average since GCI started tracking superintendent data in 2012.
- But the Great Investment also involves hundreds of facilities planning to upgrade drainage (43 percent), cart paths (41 percent) and existing irrigation systems (37 percent) within the next three years. Even 12 percent of courses are expected to improve their maintenance facilities, operational support structures seldom seen by customers. And let’s not forget equipment. Nearly half (49 percent) of capital spending in 2018 will include equipment purchases, so fresher coats of green, orange and red will be spotted in all four regions.
- The majority of turf managers from coast to coast find the bunkers on their course to be more challenging to maintain than greens, with two-thirds of State of the Industry respondents casting a negative strike on bunkers.
- Golf’s labor situation failed to improve in 2017, and industry executives and analysts are predicting more struggles filling open positions in 2018.
For more information and the full article, click here.
