What a 70-Property Club Management Company Solved with Technology That Every Club Can Learn From

You know the refrain. "We've always done it this way, and it's worked fine."

The membership director manages inquiries through email and spreadsheets. The GM pulls reports from three different systems to get a full picture of what's happening. Communications go out through the club management software because that's what the club has. Member preferences live in people's heads or on sticky notes tucked into desk drawers.

And for a long time, this approach worked. Clubs got members. Members stayed. Life went on.

Here's the problem: what worked in past generations won't cut it anymore. The world has changed. Your prospective members research clubs the same way they research everything else—online, late at night, on their phones. They expect the same level of service and personalization they get from premium restaurants, boutique hotels, and even their dentist.

And why shouldn't your club deliver that? The tools exist. They're not experimental. They're not prohibitively expensive. They're proven, accessible, and being used by successful clubs right now.

Patrick Damer, Chief Revenue Officer at Arcis Golf Management, has watched this scenario play out across 70 properties as his company has grown from managing three clubs in 2012 to overseeing a billion-dollar portfolio today. What he's learned about solving this problem at scale has major implications for individual clubs trying to compete in this fast-paced world.

The Revenue-First Philosophy

Before we get into technology, it’s important to understand Damer’s background. He started out working at golf clubs, as a caddie hauling golf bags and eventually as a PGA professional. He worked food and beverage, served as clubhouse manager, and eventually moved into GM roles. His entire career has been about the member experience.

"I figured out early on that revenue fixes a lot of things," Damer mentioned during an interview on the Crushing Club Marketing podcast. "It's much easier to go into a board meeting saying we're driving revenue, so now we have capital to invest back into the club."

This isn't about cost-cutting. Arcis has consistently invested in properties—acquiring parking decks, golf courses, restaurants. When they acquire a club, the first question is: where should reinvestment go? Sometimes it's unglamorous infrastructure like HVAC and irrigation pumps. Sometimes it's high-impact amenities like upgraded fitness equipment.

The technology investments fall into this same category. They're not about replacing people. They're about making your team more effective so you can generate the revenue that funds everything else your club needs.

Two Systems, Two Purposes

Here's where a lot of clubs get confused. They think their club management software—their POS, billing, tee times, member directory—is handling everything they need. It's handling operations. What it's not built for is the experience side.

Damer draws a clear line between the two:

Your ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) handles: membership management, dining module, tee sheets, point of sale, member billing—all the operational functions.

Your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) handles: sales and marketing, communications, lead tracking, member engagement, survey management, personalization data.

"If that preference information lives in the point of sale, it's too late," Damer explained. "Someone walking into one of our clubs—we need to get that information on a recall sheet so they know the member likes to sit by the fireplace or by the windows. In this day and age, you have more staff turnover. Getting data to a place where it can be actionable is critical."

At Arcis, they run their operations through a custom-built ERP and use HubSpot enterprise-wide for the experience side. That integration means when a member completes a post-visit survey, that feedback lives on their contact record where the entire team can access it—not buried in a third-party survey tool that requires a login most staff don't have.

Why This Matters for a Single Club

Your first reaction might be: "That's Arcis. They've got 70 clubs and deep pockets. We're one club trying to make payroll."

Fair point. But here's the thing—the efficiencies Damer describes become more critical when you're working with limited resources.

Think about your membership director. She's probably handling sales, marketing, communications, event coordination, and member onboarding. She's using spreadsheets or an outdated CRM that makes her duplicate work. She knows it's inefficient, but changing systems feels overwhelming when she's already stretched thin.

Or consider your GM, especially if he's mid-career. He's trying to prove himself to the board, drive membership growth, and prepare the club for the next generation—all while managing daily operations. He needs reporting that shows measurable progress, not guesswork pulled from disconnected systems.

The cost of these platforms has come way down. HubSpot and similar CRMs aren't prohibitively expensive for a single club. The real expense is continuing to operate without the visibility and the efficiencies automation provides.

The Pipeline Management Question

When I asked Damer what he'd prioritize if he took over a club tomorrow, he started with the website—messaging, positioning, how the club tells its story. Then he went straight to pipeline management.

"Who owns it?" he asked. "If everybody owns it, nobody owns it."

Someone needs to wake up every day asking: How many tours do we have scheduled? What outbound efforts are we making? When prospects with young families visit, have we coordinated so the junior golf director just happens to be there?

This isn't about high-pressure sales tactics. Members are excited to join clubs. They're investing in a lifestyle. But somebody needs to systematically manage that journey from first website visit to signed membership agreement.

At Arcis, when someone fills out an interest form at 9:30 PM (because that's when busy families have time to research), they immediately get a text and email asking if they want to book a tour. There's a live calendar link. They can schedule right then without waiting for a callback the next business day.

"How do we reduce friction in that process?" Damer said. "Most households are busy. When parents are having that conversation late at night about touring a club, we want to make booking that tour as easy as possible."

Starting Points for Skeptical Leaders

The change management piece is harder than the technology itself, Damer admitted. When you're dealing with people's livelihoods—when you're telling your sales team here's your whole new system and process—you need to get it right.

His advice: start small.

"Identify what could be most impactful in your operation," he suggested. "It can be everything from staff scheduling to understanding where you have blind spots. Find that starting spot, get some quick wins, come back to your board and show them the impact. Then people start to buy in."

Even feeding your annual member survey into AI to surface insights instead of reading every response manually—that's a starting point. It costs almost nothing and immediately demonstrates value.

The clubs that will thrive aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones that recognize communication and member experience as strategic functions, not administrative tasks. They understand that technology amplifies what your people can do, it doesn't replace them.

"We're all drowning in data," Damer said. "How do you surface the insights? Nobody has unlimited human capital. Leveraging technology to make people more efficient, to free their time to think more strategically on the business instead of just working in it—that's the opportunity."

The Legacy Question

Whether you're a board member thinking about retirement or a GM building your reputation, the same question applies: What position do you want to leave your club in?

Implementing better systems now—whether it's a proper CRM, automated communications, integrated survey management, or just getting your website right—these aren't flashy projects. They're infrastructure investments that compound over time.

The clubs currently operating at capacity may feel like they can wait. Although there's an argument to be made that now is exactly the time to invest. Conditions always change. The clubs that weather downturns are the ones that built systems during the good times—systems that track where leads come from, that maintain engagement with 50-50 prospects, that have visibility into their entire membership pipeline.

Remember, you're not just competing with other clubs anymore. You're competing with premium dining experiences, boutique fitness, luxury travel—all the other ways affluent families might spend their discretionary time and money.

Damer and his team at Arcis have proven these systems work at scale. The question for individual club leaders is whether they're willing to take that first step, get some quick wins, and start building the infrastructure their club needs to succeed in 2025 and beyond.

Because the alternative—continuing with sticky notes and spreadsheets and hoping your next hire somehow knows all the institutional knowledge the last person accumulated over 20 years—that's not a strategy. That's just hoping things work out.

And as they say, hoping isn't a plan.