Burhill Team News April 2022
Colin Mayes Chief Executive Dear Colleagues, Four months down and eight to go, where has the time gone?! I am happy to report that our overall trading in all divisions of the group are still ahead of our budget plan, albeit we are starting to see signs that our customers are beginning to tighten their own purse strings somewhat. This is no surprise as we are all dealing with increased costs in nearly every area of our daily lives. Sadly it is something that we are going to have to deal with for the short term whilst we have so much instability in the world, especially the war in Ukraine which has affected us in so many ways. What is for sure is that BGL are dealing with all the issues we are being faced with and I am anticipating our April results to be very much in line with our expectations being slightly ahead of our budget and importantly ahead of our performance pre Pandemic in 2019, which is really good news. Thankfully the golf business is still thriving having been one of the few beneficiaries of the Pandemic. Our memberships have never been fuller and I know that all of our General Managers and their sales teams are working very hard to ensure that we retain more members than ever before as we begin the season of renewing our golfers memberships. In April the Golf Division benefitted from the extremely warm Easter spell when temperatures in the south of England reached over 20ºC in some parts.
The Masters Golf event was also exciting with Rory McIlroy making a last-minute charge on the Sunday but still beaten by USA’s Scottie Scheffler who had a very consistent four rounds. History has shown that to win the Master’s consistency is the key, you need to play well for 4 days not just one!!! I am also delighted to say that our wedding business is picking up with a number of businesses heading for a record year. Overall, our Food & Beverage departments at nearly all of our clubs are still finding reduced demand challenging and we are not alone in seeing that winning back customers to eat and drink with us is no easy task. It is for that reason that each and every one of us must focus on ensuring that when people do decide to eat and drink with us, we must all be on our “A Game”, a friendly “hello” and “what can I get for you today?” from a hopefully familiar smiling face really does go a long way in helping to retain members and visitors staying and spending their money with us. On the project front we have just finished our new investment into the Trackman Driving Range at Wycombe Heights along with building a new purpose-built food and bar service area for it, which has seen sales dramatically improve since the driving range re-opened. We have also extended the driving range facilities at our Burhill Golf Club and refurbished the teaching bays, thereby yet again improving member facilities and conditions for our employees to work in. In May we will start on a major refurbishment project of the old cottages, that were used to store golf bags, into a purposebuilt golf bag and trolley store for our members to enjoy. We are also embarking on a number of smaller, but still important, developments at many of our other sites including our golf courses, energy supplies, kitchens, F&B and outside seating areas. All of this investment is aimed at delivering improved standards for our members and customers.