Why BOYNE Golf Uses Experience Agents To Personalize Every Visitor's Trip With Ken Griffin, Director of Golf Sales and Marketing at BOYNE Resorts
Ken Griffin is the Director of Golf Sales and Marketing at BOYNE Resorts. Compared to his colleagues, Ken is relatively new to the Michigan-based BOYNE Golf team but has interacted with the company for over 25 years, including more than 15 as an employee. In his current position, he leads the development of nationwide marketing strategies that have successfully resonated with and attracted visitors from more than 40 states.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Ken Griffin explains why BOYNE Resorts’ golf courses are considered world-class destinations
What sales and marketing strategies do the resorts use to attract visitors?
Why BOYNE is hesitant to use AI for creating its brand stories
Ken explains the process of planning a vacation at a resort and why you should start with speaking to an Experience Agent
What unique expertise do BOYNE's Experience Agents provide to potential visitors?
Ken describes the resorts’ efforts to reach people worldwide
What you’ll learn in this episode:
Many resorts offer various packages to potential visitors. Based on photos, listings, and online information, they can choose the package that suits them best. But how can travelers be sure? What if they had the flexibility to customize their trips beyond preset packages?
According to Ken Griffin, who has been engaged in golf sales and marketing on behalf of resort destinations for a quarter century, visitors should be able to customize travel experiences rather than just clicking and accepting one. BOYNE Resorts, which features 100 room types at three lodging locations and 10 golf courses, employs Experience Agents who help customers plan their visits according to their specifications and preferences. The options may include finding the right room, scheduling multiple rounds of golf, or planning trips to popular destinations nearby. Ken notes that his Experience Agents have years of experience planning golf vacations and are available to lend their insights rather than just taking and inputting orders.
On this episode of From Persona to Personal, Roger Hurni welcomes Ken Griffin, Director of Golf Sales and Marketing at BOYNE Resorts, to chat about personalizing the travel experience for golf resort visitors. Ken talks about why BOYNE guests speak with Experience Agents before their visit to help customize their packages and how they attract national and international clientele.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
This episode’s sponsor:
Today’s episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. At Off Madison Ave, we create meaningful moments of brand trust and influence how people interact and engage with brands.
There is a science behind tapping into your audiences’ desires and motivation. After all, if you’re not changing your audiences’ behaviors, you can’t truly unlock all of your brand’s potential.
The proven models and methods of Behavior Design are the strategic foundation for your brand’s success.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:02
This is From Persona to Personal podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. Off Madison Ave creates meaningful moments of brand trust and influences how people interact and engage with brands. The science behind their approach taps into your audience's motivations and desires. After all, if you're not changing your audience's behaviors, you can't truly unlock all of your brand's potential. Now, let's get started with the show.
Roger Hurni 0:33
Hello, everyone, I am Roger Hurni, the host of From Persona to Personal where I get to use my expertise in consumer behavior modification to engage with top business leaders who are propelling their brands forward. Before I get to today's guest, this episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. Off Madison Ave employs behavioral science to create meaningful moments of brand trust, which influences how people interact and engage with companies. Their behavioral approach taps into your visitors' motivation and prompts them to shift behavior. And if you're not shifting your audience's behaviors, you truly can unlock all of your full brand's potential. These proven behavioral models and methods are the strategic foundation for your destination's success, visit offmadisonave.com to learn more. Now, without further ado, all you golfers out there are going to be super excited to hear about our next guest. His name is Ken Griffin and he is the Director of Sales and Marketing at BOYNE Golf. Although he is quote unquote, the new guy, so to speak, on a very experienced BOYNE golf team. Ken is actually starting his 16th year after calling on competing against and working with BOYNE in some capacity for the past 25 years. So you know BOYNE Golf is, and I've only heard this, but I've not been there yet a superb golf destination. It does have 10 golf courses that are considered to be incredible amongst three different resorts that are also fantastic. And a lot of people, friends of mine in the golf business say that it is one of the ultimate summer golf destination spots. So Ken, welcome to the show. Well, thanks, Roger.
Ken Griffin 2:19
Thanks for that great introduction. We think it's pretty special place.
Roger Hurni 2:23
Now, did I mess up anything you think need to be corrected? No. All right, highly unusual for me, I generally mess up a lot. Let's get let's get right into this. The 10 golf courses because I watched a video online as part of my research eats and I've been to the Masters, though, I'm gonna qualify this. It looks like a world class golf destination. So I'm kind of curious how you put it in line with everything else out there in the world. But what makes it so special?
Ken Griffin 2:57
Well, you take anything and you figure the top 15 or 20 destinations in the US. And first of all, it starts with Greg golf quality golf experience, because if it isn't a quality golf centric experience, then you don't get to play in that sandbox. But above and beyond that, one of the big differentiators for us are the variety, because you take the finest golf destinations in the US take pioner she take bandhan dunes outstanding. Nobody will ever debate the quality of the golf, but their sit in their courses, even though the multiple courses but they're sit in very similar terrain. And one of the things that sets us apart is that in a very short, no, it's 25 miles the farthest you can drag from course to course is 25 miles to get to our 10 courses. And we have four courses sitting right on the lake shores of Lake Michigan. We have 12 miles north of there we have four courses, that one has a nine mile long cart path that is a 350 foot vertical drops from tee to green on 13 and you're looking at 4000 acres of Northern Michigan forest that you can't see a building on and you go south to BOYNE mountain and you have a 1.2 mile drive up and you played down to away so we've got you know, mountain side courses. We've got courses built in for wetlands. We have mountain top courses, we have a quarry course took an old stone quarry on Lake Michigan. And that is part of our Lynx quarry combination, you know part of it's a links style course part of it's a quarry course. And the other was actually a traditional parking course right there at Bay Harbor. So right across the parking lot, you have variety and it just kind of represents the variety that we offer with the 10 all within about a 15 mile drive at batasia Michigan.
Roger Hurni 4:45
You know it sounds like you literally can offer everything except the golf courses in Florida having the hazard of the alligators like walking in under courses, which I'm sure you don't want that hazard That being said, Is there anything about the courses or the experience, he would actually change the way you see like, hey, we can approve this, or here's something I'd like to see us do that would be an interesting offer for our guests.
Ken Griffin 5:13
Well, that's kind of a continuing and ongoing debate. Okay, take the first course we built was the heather at the highlands, in Arbor springs. And that course was built in 1966 by a Robert Trent Jones senior. And we've gotten different architects to design the courses, some vocal Bill Nokomis was built several course many courses here in Michigan. But we also have Arthur goals based courses. And there's an Arthur Hills course, carrying his name at the islands, or the hills is also to develop the courses at the Bay Harbor and Bay Harbor golf club. We have a Donald Ross Memorial course, at the highlands. Now this course was developed in the early 90s. But everybody's building the course that you just couldn't play. Let's see how tough we can make it. Let's make a bucket list. And you do it once and you really don't ever want to do it yet. When instead we took Donald Ross falls from around the world, a lot of ministre us one from Royal Dornoch over in the UK where he grew up. But we build a tribute course to Donald Ross that are replicas of famous Donald Ross holes. And as far as changing him, we're just going through the process over the course of the last two years, we've changed five of those holes, because the technology available to us now to replicate holes versus what was available in 1990 was dramatically different. So now we can GPS and get the you know with with Google Earth and better access to some of the drawings, we can get degrees within an inch of SPAC now, yeah, and that's what we're doing as we upgrade roles. We've done five already, we have two more on the board for next up.
Roger Hurni 6:55
So it sounds like you're there's no finish line on it. To quote Nike, you know, there's there's this constant level of improvement that you're doing to make sure that the experience is always Premier, the
Ken Griffin 7:09
worst occur when you know, trees grow. I've got to pick up my inquiries from when it opened in the mid 70s. And the everybody looks and goes, Well, where is that from? And I'm like, Well, that's the Alpine and they're like, well, that tree is huge. And I'm like, Yeah, four years ago, 45 years ago, there was a view it was an eight foot all i tree. Now it covers the green. So I mean, there's some just natural that you'd have to you'd have to cut greens and fairways back because they naturally creep in you have to take trees. I mean, imagine how forests grow over 40 or 50 years that we've had two courses. So we do things to open up sight line. So it is a continual work in progress. Technology changes to golf clubs change what your user changes. So what you know that to have a great experience. We have to keep the courses up to date with a modern technology so that you can have better utilization. And as we talked about before, right on just have more fun.
Roger Hurni 8:03
Yeah, I would be the evil golf course designer, I would watch where people are mostly hitting the balls. And wherever those balls land, I put a sand trap. If they hit the ball somewhere else I plant a tree just to annoy people. Yeah. Well, the courses sound great. I mean, the destination seems like it would attract people from all around the world. I'm curious with your title and role. What are you doing from a sales and marketing perspective to attract those visitors?
Ken Griffin 8:36
Well, we've we've seen a big change. If you go back 10 or 12 years ago, we were kind of a strong regional band. But we weren't really known on a national basis and strong as we are now. And we've really made a concerted effort. And I would say probably 85% of our golfers were Midwest Centric and the vast majority of those coming out of Michigan. If I go back 10 or 12 years ago. Well, now well 45% of our golfers come from outside of the state of Michigan. We have we've enjoyed having 40 golfers from 48 states play our courses over the last two years. Part of it are our efforts to reach out but in large part we reach out to where there's easy access to get here. And there's been a lot of growth Trevor cities airports, only about a little over an hour from our courses. And that airport is going from a small regional to now they have direct flights from 18 US cities in the summertime. Boston is a direct flight into Traverse City. It's just over two hours, LaGuardia and Newark, about an hour and a half. So DC both airports so around the US from Phoenix to Denver to Minneapolis to both coasts of Florida. There's direct access into northern Michigan and we've really seen that ease of access of getting here so I mean, we've always had great summer golf weather, you know at 70 to 80 degrees, it's light breezes, it's not high humidity. So the weather's great. Horses have a lot of variety. And now with easy access, we're just finding more and more people discovering.
Roger Hurni 10:12
So do you have to work a lot with the airport? Well, we're chambers, or Michigan State tourism, it have to do spend a lot of time lobbying to get that infrastructure put in place so that it makes it easier to get to does that we weren't doing.
Ken Griffin 10:31
We work closely with both of those groups. We're aware of what markets they're going to you know, either from p&l Pure Michigan standpoint where they're taking the campaign, and that kind of started it at some level eight or 10 years ago when they started to go to Dallas and Atlanta is key markets that they identified for people coming to Michigan. And then that just has grown and grown and grown from those couple of markets to like I said, 17 marks style, but now we have good relationships, both with the airport. And with the state marketing arm for permission.
Roger Hurni 11:03
So leave me this question, because I'm curious about just the marketing part of it. I'm curious about like, what your most effective strategy is, are you doing fam trips for golf? Journalists? Are you doing something in social? Are you doing anything that you feel like have this thing like really nails it for us all the time?
Ken Griffin 11:26
Well, yes, and yes. And yes. We're probably doing all of the above. One of the big turning points for us was about six years ago, we won an award for one of our ads, we at avid Schiller has done a lot of photography here. And Evan is a world renowned golf course photography. He took a spectacular picture of Lake Michigan and lakes. Number seven. Kris use me. And we created a two page ad we put it in PGA Tour magazine and and we won the award and the resort category to PGA show for the best resort at what the same time we were doing some tracking. And that way too expensive ad in PGA Tour magazine for an entire year, didn't generate nearly as many phone calls as you thought it might were like, Okay, what's an didn't generate any revenue. And probably in hindsight, he should have fired me. But thank God, they kept me. And what we decided was that you look at any golf publication. They're beautiful pictures of beautiful golf courses in beautiful magazines, and you just leave through them, but there's no differentiator. And so what we started to do really expanded our fam opportunities. And we looked in the markets where there weren't direct flight Nurik flights into and out of, and we work with influencers, although they weren't known as influencers seven years ago. But in today's world, they would be called that but who has golf publications that the readers in those markets trust their regional magazines with probably print and digital opportunities. And we invited them to come and experience our resort and tell their readers our story, in their words, not ours, because we could write a story. But what's the difference between that just taken out an ad, how much of leave was that we didn't want them to just write a story or take our 10 story and put it into magazine. It's their read there. I mean, it's third party endorsement, we wanted them to come experience us. And they've all played at least five to six of our courses, they can't come in for a day, we really don't take them opportunities that come in, and only stay for one or two nights, because it's not who we are. average length of stay is three to four days on our trips, not to an average number of courses played is four and a half, five. So that means you still have five left to go. So you're not halfway there yet. But really to experience the quality and the variety across all the resorts. It doesn't happen with a one or a two day trip.
Roger Hurni 14:06
So the fam trips may make perfect sense. I'm curious if you've done anything in this area, or this is just an opportunity. I mean, the courses are drop dead gorgeous. I have to imagine that everyone playing on that and is, you know, taking photos and selfies and you know, sharing the video experience. Are you doing anything to engage that army of golf enthusiast to where you're just listening to what they're doing and amplifying their content and weighing it in on social? Are you doing any of that kind of work?
Ken Griffin 14:42
We do do that? I mean, we follow our social channels. So strongly, we're on Facebook, and Instagram and x and LinkedIn and YouTube are are the channels that we really because, you know if you're not going to actually monitor and really, you know, comment and and drive, drive traffic through those sites, then don't bother going ahead and open up a new site just to say you have an account on that site. Yeah. But we do a lot. But, you know, we do share really good content out beyond the reach maybe of that individual with permission to the individual. But still, we like to have a lot of control, because we know are some of the best photos you've taken? Every week, I take them there that usually if we post something about one of the resorts or one of the courses, that's where you'll see everybody posting their photos from their recent trip from sharing their experiences from their recent trip. So no, it's it's been a very good opportunities for for us to share that social.
Roger Hurni 15:41
And one of the questions in this area, and then we'll move on. And I only have to ask it simply from the fact that you can't look at anything these days without seeing AI involved in everything. And in the conversations I've had with guests. And then in my work and in consumer behavior. I had seen people starting to integrate AI into writing brand stories or aggregating listening of social media posts so that they can see things that they may not capture. I mean, there's all sorts of opportunities out there, beyond chat, GGP. Are you starting to use it? Or are you just looking into it? Are you using it now? And effectively? I'm kind of curious where where you're at on that continuum?
Ken Griffin 16:25
We're looking into it, we think it may be an opportunity, but we think it's May we do do so do monitoring of all the social channels. Okay, yeah, we're a service. So we know what's going on there. We certainly I mean, our biggest review session, we've tried some of the golf specific resume review sessions. But Google, my business is our strongest opportunity for reviews and following up with people there on their comments, be it good or bad, then we are looking into AI as an opportunity into the future. But go back to my comment a few minutes ago, it's about your experience on this course. And I don't think AI can do that. I don't think ai ai can tell you that the course condition here and the green speeds here are the same across all 10 courses within this very narrow range. That's, I think that's gonna be very challenging. I'm a little bit old school. But I think it's very challenging for AI to put the knowledge in the emotion of what it's actually like to be there versus what they think it should say.
Roger Hurni 17:28
Yeah, no, and that's fair enough, because I, I look at it as a tool that can be supplementals and some some labor tasks. I mean, for some organizations that can be very transformational as well, but you hit on something that there it is a personalized experience. And, you know, Gartner had come out with a study a number of years ago that basically if you're not personalizing the experience, or anybody who does personalize an experience in any sort of organization for their customers, they're gonna outsell any of their competitors by 20%. So is there something unique or special that you do to try to personalize that golf experience or that desert experience? Or is what you have to offer and there Choose Your Own Adventure personalization enough?
Ken Griffin 18:15
Well, in this world of automated and do everything online, and Zizi, just hit the buttons and plan your experience will let you buy a tee time online. Because you have a certain amount of hours you want to play you have a time you can start you have a time you can add. But if you want to buy a golf package or golf experience, as we put it here, you need to talk to one of our experienced agents who has multiple years working in the golf spectrum for us before they're allowed to do anything. Because they want to play on your vacation, not let you buy a package. We could put a package up there, but they want to make sure that you're playing the course of that you want well first of all that you're staying at the resort in which because the resorts are just rooms mean they're Ted lodging options at BOYNE mountain. There are nine lodging options at the highlands there are three lodging options at tnfa harbor. We have 100 different room types and 3400 beds and addition to the 10 courses, the what how much time between them and which courses are best for B of if this is my index. So this is the group I'm playing with. This is what we're trying to do. And just having 60 boxes so everybody can hit from every hole we have isn't enough. So our experienced agents help plan your vacation if you come in and say look, I want to check in this night. I don't want to play around and the next day I want to play to route and then I want to finish with a single round because I'm leaving or makin Island is nearby and it's a great tourist destination. So maybe I want to play around a golf one morning and go to a winery or go to Mac at Island. We help you build a vacation experience that is going to be the best experience for you. So that your experience not our package.
Roger Hurni 19:59
I I think that that's actually genius. Do you really call them experience agents?
Ken Griffin 20:04
We do. Oh, I do experience. They're, they're not reservation agents, because anybody can take reservations. They help you plan what you want to add.
Roger Hurni 20:16
I love the customization and the personalization that happens by somebody who can really tailor the destination experience to your needs when you come in, because I had not seen that at other places. I mean, everybody's got to kind of see yours, you can give you recommendations and, you know, Semite, or the experience, but I don't think they're looking at it as holistically as your experience agents are. Unless you tell me differently.
Ken Griffin 20:40
No, I mean, great down to, there are 14 wineries around us that he wants the absolute best, why would you want the best social scene with good wine? But the good eight? So what are you looking for on and off property? You know, are you into mountain biking? Because we have a lot of trails? But do you really want to bike and work at it? Or do you just want to get electric bike and ride to town? Because there's a trail to do that. So you know, it's, it's what you want?
Roger Hurni 21:06
Nice, nice. So it's amazing. But now I'm kind of curious, what does success look like three to five years from now? Where do you see this going? Where would you like it to go?
Ken Griffin 21:18
Well, you know, we're very fortunate, we have been on a pretty good roll ahead of curve it ahead of COVID. And so we're I mean, we're coming towards the end, we've got a couple weeks left of our golf season now. But we are going to have our 10th record year in a row for golf. And we just see it continuing. I mean, I I can understand it in some municipalities or some, you know, local city courses, were flattening out that a hangover affection curve for COVID are starting to flatten a little bit. And we didn't we saw an increase in rounds, and fortunately an increase in revenue again this year. And, you know, one of the things that we have going for us is that we've maintained most of our Michigan golf, we've grown our golfers outside of the state of Michigan. And we see that continue as more and more people become aware of the opportunities. One of the things that always used to happen when we get somebody from California or Florida call, they call and say, Okay, well, that's my price. Now I want to go to Norway, that's all inclusive, that includes your golf, and they're like, Well, we thought this was good golf, that's not enough money for be good golf. So at the National concept lever, we are a great value for the quality of courses we have. Even though we are the most expensive public golf in the state of Michigan, Michigan as 650 public courses and 800 courses total, we have to play in both sandboxes we have to be relative in the state of Michigan because of the number of people that would bring from the state. By the same token, we are fortunate enough to play in this national sandbox from a quality and guest experience. That were we offered tremendous value when somebody from out of state learns about us, they can't believe how inexpensive we are
Roger Hurni 23:11
merriness. Good. So we've talked about all the positive kinds of things that are happening, and everything you're doing really well. I'm kind of curious now is what keeps you up at night. I mean, what's the what's the biggest challenge you're facing right now you have to overcome?
Ken Griffin 23:27
Well, we've got one opportunity because we're, we're nowhere near done. But we're certainly expanding our reach outside of it in the US outside of Michigan or outside of the Midwest. Probably the next thing and we've taken a step in that direction. We'll see it come to fruition next June. But the international market, because we've been a member of this group called International associate iaato International Association of Golf Tour Operators, that we've been going to the conventions. While we were set up for a number of years, we were selected as the site it will one conference every year in North America. Next June the world comes to BOYNE to experience our courses. So we will have people from the Far East, from South America, from Australia, New Zealand, Europe, probably there'll be over 350 tour operators and vendors. About 50% are from North America and the other 50% are from all over the world, South America, the Dominican. So we're looking forward to hosting these people for the better part of a week to experience that because you know, even when I was at the conference this year, it's hard to believe. And we didn't even think about even when I got back I had conversations with the local airport. And I said Do you guys realize you can leave barcelona spain and with a single connection could be in Traverse City? Yeah, that way. No, we hadn't thought about that. Yes, it happens now the boss And in New York and Atlanta are all lined up. But you know, out of the out of the Dominican Republic or South America, you know, you land in Dallas or Atlanta, and you've got to stops till you're in northern Minnesota. And so it's ways your access the world to come to Northern Michigan and enjoy the golf experience.
Roger Hurni 25:23
Oh, that's fantastic. I'm congratulations, having the world like come to you next year will be I'm sure. A huge, you know, plus, for sure. You have been good with your time. I have just one last question. And I always think that what you don't do, says more about who you are than what you do do. So I'm curious as to what is the worst advice you've ever gotten that you said no to?
Ken Griffin 25:54
The worst advice that I've ever gotten that I said no to? It's a good question. No, it could be I was fortunate. You know, the individual Harvey, if I go back 10 years ago, probably nobody would have hired me to do golf marketing. So BOYNE hired me 15 years ago, they originally hired me to do ski marketing 10 years ago then somebody decided I wouldn't be bad at doing golf marketing. So they probably would have said no to me is I spent 30 years in a ski business that I was a skier, and boy and hire me to do their ski mark again, somebody said, Let's pivot and turn and have 10 Do golf marketing. And at first, I probably would have even said no to look, but now it fits me like a glove. I'm fortunate that I worked for a company that has gone to the third biggest ski company United States as well as having all these courses. And so I get to ski and golf and get to have fun while I'm doing it and get to show up what great facilities we have.
Roger Hurni 26:54
Mara Burna. Well, I appreciate the conversation today. It's been great. Congratulations on all the success. And I really appreciate being a guest on the show. Everyone I had been speaking with Ken Griffin, he is the Director of Sales and Marketing at BOYNE Golf. Ken, where can people learn more about you and BOYNE Golf.
Ken Griffin 27:14
The best site would be boynegolf.com, B-O-Y-N-E golf dot com. Because obviously a lot of information about the courses and the programs and everything that we offer. Beyond that it also has access. And that gives you a little bit of flavor of the three resort properties. So that you can take a look at the difference. What I always say is if you really have interest, go to boynegolf.com peruse around a little bit about the time that you take. There's so much information in there, there's you could get confused. On your trip. Now the 800 number, let one of the guest experience agents walk you through that site and utilize that site to help plan your vacation.
Roger Hurni 27:51
Excellent. The guest experience agent, I'm going to tell you there's going to be a lot of listeners that might just steal that I title it for some of their destinations. If it's a thing, I'm gonna have to make sure you get credit in a couple of years for that. All right again, thank you so much. This is Roger Hurni. From Persona to Personal is the podcast and we'll see you next time.
Outro 28:14
Thanks for listening to From Persona to Personal, the podcast that takes a closer look into how organizations personalize their marketing. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
