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By Rob Carey
The Crossings at Carlsbad enjoys strong demand across various customer segments, but balancing offerings to maximize profit while maintaining customer satisfaction isn’t always so easy
In its tenth year of operation, The Crossings at Carlsbad has a good problem: plenty of business. Set in a part of northern San Diego County that’s home to many upper-middle-class residents, a slew of corporate offices and several hotels and attractions, the facility—owned by the City of Carlsbad—is as much a destination golf experience as most any resort.
But with one-quarter of the 60,000 annual rounds coming from those who pay favorable city- and regional-resident rates, general manager Russ Onizuka must focus on business-development strategies aimed at other golfers plus non-golf lines of business. Therefore, the facility operates much like a corporate conglomerate would—decisions are made throughout the year on how to allocate resources not simply to drive demand in each area, but also to ensure the level of quality is preserved for every type of product the facility offers.
For instance, with a whopping 45 percent of the facility’s revenue coming from banquets and à la carte food and beverage service, Onizuka has rules governing the dining and social spaces in the 28,000-square-foot clubhouse. “Our challenge is that the banquet space is our Canyons Restaurant, where we do more than 100 lunch covers each weekday and 125 covers for Sunday brunch,” he says. “But we will never close the restaurant early for a banquet or special event. Our à la carte patrons have to know that it will consistently be available to them. It shows respect to our local clientele, and that we value their business.”
While airwalls can cordon off part of the space when it’s not needed for lunch, the restaurant won’t close before 2:30 p.m., any day. And once it does close, staffers from all departments know that if they have a moment to spare, they should come by to help turn over the room for an impending wedding, retirement party, reunion, charity dinner, quinceañera or other gathering. “We hire job candidates who demonstrate untrainable characteristics, which makes things much easier when we need flexibility from them,” Onizuka notes.
Furthermore, city officials and KemperSports management did not want the 80 weddings and dozens of other nicely profitable special events hosted each year to compromise the experience of golfers. So they decided to analyze and then reconfigure space in and around the clubhouse in order to “create other options for golfers and the general public to have a nice F&B and social experience any time of day,” Onizuka says.
The result: Roughly 400 square feet of the pro shop was converted to a cozy pub and lounge, which now grosses $15,000 per month. Also, what was a narrow outdoor patio off the other side of the pro shop was doubled in size, and now features two fire pits plus glass panels atop waist-high stone walls, so the distant ocean view can be enjoyed without the breeze disturbing meals and drinks. “That’s become the main post-round gathering spot,” Onizuka adds. “And the return on investment got even better when we realized it can handle overflow restaurant business, plus wedding and event guests who want to spread out and relax near the end of the evening.”
Allocating resources wisely and tweaking those allocations regularly is critical to the success of the property’s marketing function, as well. Besides the 13 percent of rounds that come from corporate, social and charity outings, the stay-and-play segment brings in even a bit more than that. Along with several limited-service hotels in the nearby corporate corridor, the Sheraton Resort & Spa Carlsbad and the LegoLand California Resort are right next door. The Hilton Cape Rey Resort is three miles away, but promotes The Crossings to guests as its primary golf facility, too.
“Partnering with our course means they can promote themselves as true full-service resorts; we each add value for the other’s customers,” Onizuka says. In addition to play from meeting groups and individual couples or families, most wedding parties or other social groups at the hotels have folks who will rent clubs and play. And to attract golf-focused visitors, The Crossings will partner on print and online ads with a hotel, while the course’s sales reps often share an exhibit booth with a hotel at western-region golf shows. The Crossings and the Sheraton even teamed up for the 2015 IAGTO North America convention.
But The Crossings’ most dynamic marketing activities throughout the year involve its online initiatives. For instance, in winter months, the facility’s website features many wedding-party photos taken around the property because “we know that’s the time of year when people get engaged and are looking for a venue,” Onizuka says. In fact, director of marketing Nichole Tudor posts such photos to Instagram almost every day because she learned that nearly 40 percent of brides book venues and vendors from what they see on the social media platform. The Crossings now has more than 1,000 Instagram followers, up from 350 a year ago.
Once late March rolls around, the website and social-media photos become more golf-oriented, though “when we had El Nino coming in, we chose to emphasize our F&B outlets on social media just in case we saw fewer rounds played because of rain,” Onizuka says. The Crossings is also well represented on customer-review sites such as Yelp and OpenTable to reach the non-golfer crowd.
To ensure the facility is maintaining quality in each area as it pushes for more business in all departments, Onizuka and Tudor routinely monitor both the facility’s own customer-satisfaction surveys and various customer-review websites. Results are reviewed weekly, and any dissatisfied customers are contacted personally. Onizuka feels the property is striking the right balance in most areas, given recent results from KemperSports’ True Review system that found The Crossings’ customers rating their property experience at 9.3 out of 10.
Even so, Onizuka knows the balancing act never ends. “I’d say that every GM has to look around the property on a regular basis and think, ‘Are we really making the most out of what we have here? Does each area work well for our guests, and do adjacent areas flow well so they can be used in flexible ways?’”
Onizuka also knows that he will get a clear picture about all this by asking the right questions of each type of customer.
Rob Carey is a freelance writer and principal of Meetings & Hospitality Insight.