Teesnap
Driving the Golf Industry Forward

Ten years ago, Bryan Lord was trying to book a tee time and became frustrated with how difficult the process was. The smartphone revolution was just beginning to transform whole industries, and he realized that there was an opportunity to bring change to the hundreds of years of legacy thinking holding tee time management technology back. He began to think of the ways mobile technology could address the specific needs of golf courses, and thus Teesnap was born.

At the time, most golf courses were either using a pen-and-paper tee sheet or a computer tethered to their pro shop to handle bookings. These legacy systems were local, which meant operators were dealing with frustrations of managing multiple technology vendors and poor integrations. Reports were poor, disparate systems made following customer behavior impossible, and there were few integrated marketing options available at the time. Lord envisioned a cloud-based system that would increase customer engagement by having a single customer record across multiple facets of a golf operation, and then generate reports with a single enterprise business intelligence tool. The data collected from a seamless solution would provide clarity behind the counter and powerful marketing ammunition. It would also help free up pro shop staff’s time by creating operational efficiencies and help courses rethink how they operate.

Lord found an able partner in Allegiant Travel Company, who recognized the potential of his ideas. “The airline industry was much further ahead of the curve in areas like online booking and yield management, and they had recently built their own native in-flight point of sale software. Partnering with them allowed us to really hit the ground running when it came to building out our platform,” says Bryan Lord, founder and CEO of Teesnap.

Solving online bookings was the first step towards giving courses what they were really lacking: better data. Teesnap’s process aims at simplifying the check-in process while still enabling courses to collect accurate information about who was playing and what they were buying.

Teesnap provides a true end-to-end solution that empowers clients to manage all course operations without having to constantly transport data from one platform to another

Where a course had previously recorded a round as “John Doe plus three guests,” they now have a much more complete picture, while increasing their customer database threefold to boot. Courses typically had to piece together solutions from multiple vendors to handle all of their operations— tee sheet, food and beverage, accounting, marketing, etc. “Teesnap provides a true end-to-end solution that empowers clients to manage all course operations without having to constantly transport data from one platform to another,” adds Lord.

It became apparent that while helping golf courses collect better data was a great advancement for the industry, many courses were unprepared to act on that information. Teesnap began working directly with courses to help them automate and manage their marketing services, from setting up websites to building targeted email and social media campaigns. In many cases, the results have been dramatic. “With just our holiday promotions alone, we saw a 179 percent revenue increase over the previous year. The programs and traffic generated with our course data and digital marketing efforts have been phenomenal,” affirms Kurt Krause, general manager of Dragonfly Golf Club.

With over 500 courses now using Teesnap, the company has only scratched the surface of what is possible. The potential of using better data to help courses recognize trends and market more effectively is huge. “At the end of the day, we’re all avid golfers. We would love nothing more than to help the industry we love so much thrive in this mobile generation,” concludes Lord.