What Members Actually Want, and Why Most Boards Are Guessing

Dr. Jim Butler and Ray Cronin on why food and beverage outweighs golf in member satisfaction, and what happens when the data contradicts the boardroom.

Most club boards believe they know what their members want. They hear it in the grill room and the hallway, and most often from the loudest voice at the table. Club Benchmarking's leadership says that is rarely the full picture.

"The purpose of a club is to be in the business of providing the member experience," says founder Ray Cronin. Yet by CB's estimate, roughly 70 percent of U.S. private clubs with more than $1 million in revenue haven't conducted a data-driven member survey in decades.

Why isn't member satisfaction enough?

CEO Dr. Jim Butler learned the value of member feedback as a general manager, where an annual survey process lifted satisfaction at his club from 88 to 95 percent over a decade. His doctoral research showed satisfaction is only one piece. Why a member joined and how they perceive value shape satisfaction, and satisfaction combined with emotional attachment drives loyalty. The strongest clubs, he found, are the ones with the strongest loyalty.

Why do members actually join a club?

Not always for the reasons the board assumes. At a 54-hole club Butler managed, golf landed in the middle of the pack. In most clubs, the top reason members join is social interaction with other members, and the most successful clubs serve golfers, families, and social members at the same time.

“I would have bet my life as a 35-year general manager that golf would have been in the top three reasons why people joined that club.

Why does F&B matter more than golf to member satisfaction?

Across hundreds of thousands of survey responses, food and beverage has roughly twice the influence of golf on overall satisfaction, in about 98 percent of clubs with golf. Yet the average club directs about 13 to 14 percent of dues to its F&B subsidy, versus roughly a third for golf. Communication with members, and management and board performance, rank higher still.

“If you sat in the boardroom of the average club with golf, the prevailing opinion would be golf is the most important thing. But it isn't.

Cronin sees the F&B subsidy as a choice about how to fund the member experience. "It's not inefficiency," he says. "It's a pricing model." Over the past decade, the median F&B subsidy has roughly quadrupled, from about 3 percent of dues to about 12 percent, as clubs invested in the casual, outdoor, and expanded dining members value most.

What should a board do when the data contradicts it?

Start with context. A 5.8 F&B score next to a 6.5 for golf can look like a problem, until benchmarks show it places the club near the 75th percentile nationally. And when a board member decides the data doesn't apply, Cronin offers a third possibility: "Maybe the data controverts what you thought prior. And rather than changing your opinion, you want the data to change."

From there, Butler's advice is practical: ask members, build an improvement plan the board and management both support, then measure again. "I've lived it. I know it works," he says. "And every club in the country can do that."

Quotes are lightly edited for clarity.