Digital Hospitality in Golf · Edition 8
Beyond the star average
Picture two courses with 100 Google reviews each. Both show 4.2 stars. (Hypothetical, but you’ve seen this.)
Course A: 60 five-star, 20 four-star, 20 two-star.
Course B: 40 five-star, 40 four-star, 20 three-star.
Same average. Different story.
One rating is one rating. The balance of your reviews is the story.
Where this started
Every Tuesday morning our course clients get a detailed email from us, and part of it is a trend read on their last 20 reviews. The patterns in that data jumped out, and it was clear we could help more by going deeper.
So we built the Review Advocacy Index, or RAI. It shows what your reviews add up to, whether recent golfers are happy, and how golfers feel about the courses you compete with.
The math is simple
- Five-star reviews count for you.
- Four-star reviews are passive.
- One to three stars count against you.
RAI is the percentage of five-star reviews minus the percentage of one- to three-star reviews, from −100 to +100.
Course A scores +40. Course B scores +20. And Course A has more severe low ratings too, which is why we always show RAI next to the star average and the review text, never instead of them.
A real one: Druid’s Glen sits at +30.3 on Google (Sept. 25, 2025 to Sept. 24, 2026, 33 reviews).
It also takes the sting out of a single bad review. RAI shows you the whole balance, so you can tell a bad day from a real trend.
RAI isn’t a golfer survey, and it doesn’t predict revenue. It’s a clear, repeatable read on the balance of your reviews.
Small idea, big payoff
Want yours?
Get a free one-page RAI Snapshot of your course’s last 12 months on Google.
Your reviews are public. Your balance should be clear, at least to you.
That is digital hospitality.
Who else reads your reviews?
Your GM, your head pro, your F&B lead and whoever answers the phone all shape what golfers write about you. Share this with them.
This is the same Digital Hospitality in Golf newsletter we shared with operators at the Golf Inc. conference in Hilton Head. It’s free, it comes every other Wednesday, and each issue is one or two ideas your team can use.
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Digital Hospitality in Golf is free and comes every other Wednesday. Each issue is one or two ideas your team can use.