From a cruise ship into the golf industry
Hasak originally comes from tourism. As a hotel and tourism management professional he worked for large travel companies on all continents, was a product manager for sea voyages and cruises and even travelled around the world twice on a luxury cruise ship. He came into the golf industry in 1997 by chance. Inspired by Bernhard Langer's Masters win in the mid-80s, he had a golf interest that he unexpectedly turned into a job while visiting a facility near Frankfurt. In the office sat a former schoolfriend who was stopping in two weeks and offered him his post. So the travel-agency professional became a golf manager within days.
There followed years as managing director of several facilities before he took over the management of the German Golf Course Operators' Association in 2004 and thus switched from the individual facility into industry work. He has now been in this role for over fifteen years.
The heyday of the 90s
Anyone who wants to classify the German golf market has to know this time. In the mid-90s around fifty new facilities arose per year, many tennis players switched into golf, and as a manager you could win 100 to 200 new members annually. Lifelong memberships were openly marketed, because many prospects feared they would later get no admission place. In the more elitist clubs the admission fees lay at 20,000 to 25,000 German marks, in some houses you even needed a guarantor from your own ranks. The annual fees moved between 2,000 and 3,000 German marks. From today's view that sounds almost bizarre, but at the time it was a matter of course.
What the BVGA actually does
The German Golf Course Operators' Association is the umbrella body of golf course entrepreneurs, that is the owners and operators. Currently there are around 172 members in four countries. Hasak describes the core task like a management consultancy: the association supports its members in economic, strategic and market-specific questions, with the clear goal of improving their commercial result. The office is staffed with four people and covers management, marketing and sales, events as well as accounting and controlling. Small, focused, and through the specialisation very close to the realities of the businesses.
His day-to-day
The advice spans all areas of operation: food and beverage, pro shop, course maintenance, golf school, academy. A typical case is the food and beverage. If the club restaurant runs at a loss, the association gets the metrics, analyses opening hours, staff and cost of goods and discusses measures. In winter that can mean closing the restaurant operation from November to February and instead working with snacks or vending machines via reception. Creative operators build themselves a winter season through events: birthdays, weddings, Christmas parties, a Christmas or golf bazaar, wine tasting, fashion shows. The mere change of perspective, from the view of an individual managing director to the industry-wide comparison, helps many facilities more than any generic recommendation.
It runs just as concretely in other areas. In the pro shop the question often arises whether the product range still pays off or has to be adjusted. In course maintenance it is about costs that are too high and the consideration of whether outsourcing would pay off. Anyone who hires a new manager wants a clean template contract to hand instead of starting from zero each time. And then there are the cross-cutting topics that come up in every consultation, from staff search through investment decisions to the very current question of what is legally possible right now and what is not.
What golf-facility businesses are dealing with today
- Well-trained staff in sales and marketing become the decisive lever for more turnover
- The way topics are addressed shifts from pure sport to family, health and fun
- Food and beverage remains a permanent topic, often solved via an additional events business
- Keeping new members means: social integration plus real sporting development
- Operator chains grow, that increases the need for well-trained professionals
Stagnation? In his view rather change
Asked whether the German golf industry is doing something wrong, Hasak answers clearly. In his perception those responsible show more diligence and creativity than ever, especially with prices and products. Above all, facilities increasingly rely on well-trained staff in sales and marketing, which soberly considered is the biggest lever for more turnover and a better result. The way new golfers are addressed has also shifted. Where tournaments and handicap used to be central, today the topic of family is much more strongly in focus, plus health and quite simply fun. First conversations with health insurers about preventive models already exist, the ideal case would be that someone starts golf before they get ill.
Golf course dying? Rather consolidation
Hasak sees hardly any closures, just a single one in the year of the conversation is mentioned. What is increasing are transactions. Many operators who started in the early 90s are now thirty years older and arrange their succession. The children don't always want to take over, so it is sold. Buyers are predominantly private, often successful golf course entrepreneurs who add a second or third facility. So over the years operator chains have arisen, with management from one hand across several locations. Examples are the Murhof Group from Austria with around 35 facilities or the Weiland Group with ten to eleven facilities in several countries, including Germany, France, Great Britain and Sweden. Hasak considers the trend, similar to fitness-studio chains, to be lasting, and with it the need for specialist staff with industry knowledge rises.
How to keep new members
From the strong influx of recent times Hasak draws two lessons for customer retention. First, social integration: it needs a carer who literally takes new members by the hand, introduces them through events and tournaments and makes them known to one another. Second, sporting development. A taster course and the Platzreife are not enough, the fun only grows when the players actually get better through good course concepts. A good facility lives from cultivating these two sides in parallel, the social network and the playing development.
Getting to know new people every day, that is an added value no typical office job can give you.
Corona as a turning point: from shock to digitalisation
The biggest burden in the period of the conversation was the pandemic. On the initiative of the BVGA, all relevant golf associations called each other at the start of the crisis, the golf instructors' association, the managers' association, the German Golf Association and the greenkeepers' association. Together they developed a hygiene concept for the industry that was later passed on to politics. At peak times they dealt with 57 ministries in parallel, because the federal system knows several responsibilities per federal state. The result was remarkable: as early as 11 May the facilities were allowed to reopen nationwide, much earlier than initially thought.
What happened afterwards was a small surprise. Many facilities ran better than planned, annual budgets were partly already reached in August or September, and many new members were added. The pandemic also enormously accelerated digitalisation. Online tee-time bookings are practically standard today, many facilities, an estimated 100 to 120, followed suit this year, simply because they had to prove who was on the facility when and with whom. Hasak sees in this a boost that stays.
What makes him optimistic: technology and nature
Among the positive developments Hasak names above all modernisation and automation. That a large, GPS-controlled mowing robot maintains the fairways entirely without staff he could not have imagined at the start of his golf time. At the association's next international golf trade congress such a machine is to be demonstrated live, so that operators see what is technically possible today. Add the ecological value: golf facilities make a noticeable contribution through species protection, plant diversity and large extensive areas, precisely in times of climate change. And not least the human side: anyone who works at a facility gets to know new, often exciting and sometimes prominent people every day, from the regular player to the green-fee guest. It is exactly this added value that Hasak sees as an unbeatable argument for the industry.
Conclusion
Hasak's view of the industry is sober and at the same time confident: no golf course dying, but consolidation, more professional businesses, more family and health in the way it addresses people and a growing need for well-trained people. For everyone looking for an entry, his message is clear. The golf facility is a varied workplace that offers more than numbers and a desk, and precisely in times of structural change and digitalisation, new roles arise for people who want to pitch in.
