Right now (2013) that attraction is a single golf course with supporting driving range, some hotel facilities at the old Estate House, the Golf House Restaurant & Bar, and the Golf Shop.
Green Fees are consequentially expensive:
For Aberdeenshire Residents, the Greens Fees are
- Weekday Rate: £156.00
- Weekend Rate: £172.00
- Weekday Rate: £195.00
- Weekend Rate: £215.00
Once the season is in full swing there will be up to 132 slots available each day from 11th April to the end of October. So that's about 30 weeks of golf. About £4.5m in greens fees - if the 25,000+ golfing opportunities are fully booked. From that you need to pay an Executive vice-President, a senior Professional, and other golf professionals, a Greenkeeper, maintenance and security staff (even allowing for the other services like bar etc breaking even). And then you might need to pay back some of your loan for the investment, or indeed fund further new investment on developing and maintaining the course and grounds. While some of that work might be seasonal, some of the more expensive people will not be. And you would need to take into account the number of free opportunities/loss leaders that might have been offered to get business flowing.
Your guess is as good as mine, but I would expect that they would need to bring in upward of £2m this summer to cover their running costs - utilising about 50% of the courses capacity. We'll see how the year unfolds.
Julian's done a fair, diligent job of counting the bookings (such as they are) that came into this course, which was intended to 'put Scotland on the map' - which for some reason I thought had already been accomplished. The environment and the people continue to suffer. Play this course - if you don't care about the consequences. More will be coming out in mainstream media soon - but in the meantime, keep looking here, and on Aberdeen Voice, which I am happy to contribute to, as one of many - www.aberdeenvoice.com
ReplyDelete