_Apr/paddlinglikecrazy.jpg "Paddling Like Crazy")
By Rob Carey
By refining its customer focus, product offerings, brand messaging and service culture, Palmetto Dunes Resort maintains its position in the Hilton Head golf market
When its George Fazio course was chosen as the 2014 South Carolina Golf Course Owners Association’s Course of the Year, Palmetto Dunes Resort completed a rare trifecta: All three of the resort’s 18-hole layouts had then earned the distinction. The Arthur Hills course took the honor in 2009, and the Robert Trent Jones course won the award in 2003.
However, since the first award was bestowed upon Palmetto Dunes 12 years ago, the resort’s recreational amenities and community outreach have undergone sweeping transformations. Service levels and marketing programs have also evolved in order for the 54-hole facility to remain not just relevant, but among the leaders in the competitive, upscale Hilton Head market.
Clark Sinclair, a 31-year veteran at Palmetto Dunes and director of golf for the past three years, attributes the golf operation’s success to proactive—yet sometimes uncomfortable—changes that management made in response to market shifts. Those include how core golfers and casual golfers alike learn about the resort, how and why they purchase golf, and what they want in their experiences on the golf course and across the resort.
“A decade ago, golf here was all men’s groups and convention groups,” Sinclair explains. “Hilton Head was mostly a guy’s island with some family business mixed in.” But following the recession, the average size of men’s groups that frequent Palmetto Dunes shrunk from 24 to 36 guys to 12 to 16. The convention business declined as well. “On the flip side, it’s become family time here almost all year round, so we’ve adapted greatly for that,” Sinclair adds.
To pique families’ interest in the resort, management firm Greenwood Communities & Resorts runs an activity shop stocked with bicycles, canoes, kayaks, surfboards, beach umbrellas and even electric motorboats to explore or fish in the 11-mile lagoon system that cuts through the island. There are also nine fireworks shows each summer. The Self family, which owns the golf courses, has even contributed to Palmetto Dunes’ focus on the family by recently building senior and junior tee boxes on all three courses, with the junior tee distances being printed on the scorecards as well.
In another nontraditional move, resort officials recently purchased nine golf bikes, which Sinclair believes “can get a family or a buddy foursome to take two bikes plus a cart.” The bikes will complement the half-dozen Segways the facility has had for nearly seven years. Sinclair notes that Segway usage “is not huge,” but they “give [users] a good story to tell others,” especially in the form of photos posted to social media.
Away from the courses, golf management has put more of an emphasis on sales to boost rounds. “We used to just have a group coordinator, but now there’s also a salesperson and an assistant who actively get in front of visitors at places all over the island,” Sinclair says. And to maximize meeting group-related golf revenue, the resort sales staff keeps in contact with groups that have visited in the past several years “to convince those folks to keep us in their site rotation.”
With so many travelers accustomed to researching deals and booking online, Palmetto Dunes allows the Marriott and Omni hotels on property to access its tee sheets so that guests can book golf seamlessly along with their rooms. What’s more, officials completely overhauled the resort’s website and even built an app for people to play virtual golf on the facility’s courses using their mobile devices.
Because of the rising demand from Canadian snowbirds in particular, Palmetto Dunes officials now custom-build packages and passes that can last as long as 60 days in the shoulder season. “We’ll get groups of 30 to 60 guys who come for seven days and play 12 rounds, as well as a few couples who come together and stay two months,” Sinclair says. “We’ll build it however we have to in order to get all of them on the golf course during that time.”
As central as these efforts have been to boosting rounds, the one aspect of Palmetto Dunes’ shoulder season business that helped the Fazio course earn this year’s course of the year award is its focus on the local community. In addition to creating catered shotgun events at reasonable prices for groups such as local firefighters, sheriffs and hospitality industry workers, the staff works with the charity foundations from Lowe’s and Home Depot to provide free golf certificates and host events benefiting their main causes, including Habitat for Humanity, Red Cross, United Way and Boys & Girls Clubs.
Attracting people to the courses is one thing, but providing an experience that makes people return and also refer others is something else. So Sinclair works with his human resources manager to hire the right people and train them well.
“It’s refreshing to have new people come through because it keeps all of us grounded in the basics of service,” he says. “And all the department heads here are very accessible—they’re in the middle of things rather than sitting in a back office, so there’s a team feeling. That helps us hire and retain motivated people.”
What’s more, Sinclair leverages the resort’s full-time trainer to instill in his employees what he believes is central to the golf operation’s long-term health: service recovery. “We work hard to perfect that skill,” he says. “If there’s any part of a guest’s experience that isn’t pleasant, we make sure that whoever they deal with on staff is going to make them happy before they leave us. Being happy is the thing that guests remember most from any experience.”
Rob Carey is a freelance writer and principal of Meetings & Hospitality Insight.