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Hi Guillaume,
Your company, Chronogolf, was created about 3 years ago. In the last few months, Chronogolf was everywhere on the news: TVA, Canal Argent, Journal de Montréal… You’ve recently raised your second funding round for 1.5 million, congratulations !
Today, we have a few questions about your BtoC platform Chronogolf.
1.Your core business is BtoB with your golf management software, but can you tell us more about the BtoC part? (the market, the trends, etc.)
- Guillaume:
Chronogolf has been created on the premise that the modern golfer is evolving faster than the golf club itself. He likes to play on multiple courses and uses a smartphone or a tablet to book his tee times. On the other side, golf clubs find it very difficult to reach, attract and increase loyalty among this new audience. This is the reason why we decided to create Chronogolf: a golf management software that enables golf managers to streamline their operations, organize their planning and have sophisticated, yet easy to use, tools to market and remarket to golfers online. At the same time, we have built the chronogolf.ca marketplace, where golfers can find and book tee-times in real time, invite their friends, calculate their handicap and much more. The golf management software and the marketplace are two parts of the same entity, creating value for both the golf player and the golf manager.
2.What is your place on this market ?
- Guillaume:
During the past 2 years we went from 10 golf courses using our solution to now a little more than 230. This translated in 2.5 millions golf rounds booked on our marketplace, by around 250 000 golf players.
3.Just in Canada ?
- Guillaume:
We have clients in Canada, USA, France, Australia, Morocco… and we’re not done yet! Golf is a sport played all over the world!
4.What are the biggest challenges faced by the golf industry?
- Guillaume:
There are approximately 57 million golfers in the world, which makes it one of the most popular sports on the planet. This being said, it is true that golf needs to redefine its image. The greatest challenge of the industry for the next decade is to bring the new generation of golfers on the field. And again, this generation has very high expectations in terms of quality of services. They expect their experience to be as easy and pleasant as if they were booking a hotel, a flight, a spa session, etc. We see this challenge as a great opportunity for us to bridge the gap and help golf courses to make the transition to the digital world.
5.Did you have any difficulties going through this transition?
- Guillaume:
As in every market that is redefining itself, the biggest challenge is to overcome resistance to change.
There is a bit of evangelisation to be made in order to convert the old generation to the web. That being said, the fast expansion of tablets has been a great help for us. Seniors have massively adopted the iPad, which they find less overwhelming and much more intuitive than a computer. As of today, around 40% of our bookings come from tablets, and this number still amazes me!
On a more technical standpoint, seasonality is also a challenge, especially when it comes to user retention. We have to be creative during the winter, so that our customers keep thinking about us. We need to remain their first reflex when it comes to booking on their favourite course once the sunny days come back.
6.What do you do to retain your customers during winter?
- Guillaume:
We have a winter web store, where golfers can pre-purchase special promotions for the next golf season. This is also very popular among our golf managers, who see this as a great way to promote their courses during the off-season while getting some revenues.
We also send weekly newsletters to our community of golfers, where we talk about the industry in general.
Finally, we are very active on our Facebook page. We post fun and engaging content on various topics around the game.
7.I have been following you since the beginning and I’ve seen major changes on your website, especially regarding the UX… Can you tell us more about that?
- Guillaume :
At the beginning, we were focusing almost exclusively on the Golf Management Software. We needed golf courses to use our system so that the golf players could book online.
With more than 230 golf courses using our system at the moment, we are now focusing more and more on the marketplace. Our focus and dedication is to deliver the best possible booking experience to our golfers, both on desktop and mobile platforms.
Since we want to make things as simple as possible for our users, we opted for easy search on the website and we integrated an interactive map. A user can search by entering a country, a region, a city or the name of the course itself. The interactive map will help him refine his research, find the best deal and more. We really got inspired by the AirBnB user experience to build our platform.
8.What will be the next steps for Chronogolf (BtoC) ?
- Guillaume :
– Continue to A/B test our booking engine to increase the user experience and provide the right content to the right golfer.
– Integrate a loyalty and referral program so that our most active users can spread the word and share among their friends and family.
Thank you Guillaume for sharing this with us! It was great to learn more about the golf industry and how Chronogolf positions itself to disrupt it. Congratulations on your accomplishments and we wish Chronogolf the best of success for the years to come!
Website BtoC: Chronogolf.ca
Website BtoB: pro.chronogolf.ca
