Club Management Case Study

The Case and the problem ----Page 265 Fred Lee’s Club

Problems:

1. The drop of membership in Fred’s club.

2. Fred didn’t pay attention to the new country club on the south side of the city,

which means he failed to realize the competition.

3. The club’s board tend to make as little change as possible year to year in order to

cater for the current members. They consider only their current members as its

market target while ignoring other elite people beside their current members,

especially some young professionals.

4. The food and beverage revenues had been falling at a faster rate than the

member dues revenues. They can’t have the older and more loyal members

spend much time in their dining room and casual grill room. Besides, the snack

bar revenue drops 50% compared to ten years ago.

5. The pool and tennis courts were not as crowded as that of fifteen years ago,

especially at the time when school was out in summer.

6. The wedding business goes down significantly.

As listed above, problem 1, 3, 5, 6 are basically caused by the same factor that Fred’s

club didn’t pay attention to those young professionals with young families. Their

market target was totally wrong. That’s why their membership drops because they

failed to attract new young professionals, their board wants to be conservative because

they didn’t realize the right market target. There weren’t many families in the summer

because some of their older members’ kids have grown up and they failed to young

professionals with kids. The wedding was also due to the lack of young professionals.

About problem 2, I would like to believe it is because the manager did not consider the

external threat and ignored the surrounding competition. Therefore, I think this is also

a major reason for the reduction of club members. Besides, for the problem 4, the

reason why the food and beverage revenues had been falling at a faster rate than the

member dues revenues is because it does not take into account the ageing of club

members. As the age of club members increases, the food that was previously popular

with club members is not what they like now. I think that members of the club now pay

more attention to the health of the food. They are more willing to eat some foods that

are good for the body rather than the snack bar. I think this is the reason why its

income is falling rapidly.

So, I think the most serious problem facing the club now is to solve the problem of

falling food and beverage income, because it is falling faster than the member, which is

why I have to put this problem in our primary position. Secondly, I think the problem

we should pay attention to is to solve the problem of member loss, because this will

directly affect the direct income of the club. Finally, let's solve the problems related to

swimming pools and tennis courts as well as weddings.