The better the course, the more a member's signature is worth
A member's guest pays close to the same price whatever the course. A visitor does not. This week's cut of the index takes the ranked courses out and sets them against everywhere else.
Green fees are not one market. The price a visitor pays rises sharply with the reputation of the course, which surprises nobody. What the index makes visible is that the other price, the one a club charges when a member signs a guest in, barely moves at all.
Of the 269 clubs holding both figures, 30 are ranked courses. A member’s guest at those clubs typically pays £45, against £35 at the rest of the index: a difference of £10. Over the same two groups the visitor fee moves from £85 to £222.50, a difference of £137.50.
| Course | Clubs | Median guest rate | Median visitor fee | Visitor pays |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ranked courses | 30 | £45 | £222.50 | 4.9× |
| Everywhere else | 239 | £35 | £85 | 2.4× |
Put as a multiple, the point is hard to miss. Across the index as a whole a visitor pays about 2.4 times what a member’s guest pays for the same tee on the same morning. At the ranked courses that stretches to about 4.9 times. The better the golf, the more a member’s signature is worth, and by some distance.
The flatness of the guest rate is the striking half of this. 50% of every club in the index that holds a guest rate sits in a single band, £25 to £39, and that band contains championship courses and modest parkland clubs alike. A committee setting this figure is not pricing the course. It is deciding what feels reasonable to charge a member’s friend, and that answer lands in much the same place whatever the golf is worth.
Two different logics are at work. A visitor fee is a market price, set against what the course can command from a stranger who wants to play it. A guest rate is a social one, set by a committee thinking about hospitality rather than yield. They are calculated by the same clubs in the same rooms, and they pull apart hardest exactly where the golf is best.
The practical consequence is worth stating plainly. The cheapest route onto Britain’s best courses is not a deal, a late tee time or an off-season rate. It is an introduction, and the index shows it is worth most precisely at the courses most people would want it for.
The club-by-club figures behind every number here, the method and the caveats are on the index itself.
Free to quote with a credit to Hosted Rounds and a link to this insight. Every figure comes from the same records as the Member’s Guest Rate Index, where the method and the caveats are set out in full.