(This is a guest article by Dan Westervelt)
One of the first mistakes that inexperienced event planners make with golf tournaments is to ask for donations for arrival gifts. This usually results in a hodgepodge of miscellaneous and unrelated logo’d merchandise like pens, mouse pads, drink cozies in a recycled plastic bag. What message does this send to the players? This is an unprofessional/budget event. The problem with this is that your experienced players have come to expect a quality arrival gift and will judge your tournament very harshly without it, i.e. they won’t be back next year.
Solution? Find a sponsor for the arrival gifts and buy nice ones, like leather duffel bags, shoe bags, a golfer kit, or maybe a valuable pouch to clip on their golf bag. These all come with your sponsor’s logo on them so look for items that can be attached to the golfer’s bag. Classy but inexpensive, keep in mind this is the ‘first impression’ your tournament makes on these golfers, and they are your next year’s starting lineup of repeat players. The average successful event spends $30- $40 per player on these items. A 100 man event times the $30 budget is $3,000 but you sell this package for $4,000.
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