Growing Industry Challenge
At foreUP, we recognize the challenge that golf courses across the country face with tee-time demand outstripping supply. We remain steadfast in our commitment to collaborating with our clients to combat the misuse of unauthorized 3rd parties and malicious bots that secure tee times unfairly and against the terms of use of the golf course.
foreUP is diligently working directly with organizations like the National Golf Course Owner’s Association (“NGCOA”) to combat unauthorized 3rd party aggregators and malicious bots that secure tee times unfairly and against terms of use. As this is an issue that transcends foreUP, and indeed directly involves our competitors, many of which, we understand have not implemented the robust controls foreUP has implemented, foreUP firmly believes that a national conversation needs to take place industrywide.
Protecting the Integrity of Course Inventory is Our Top Priority
We recognize that eliminating malicious bot activity in the industry is a complex challenge with no single, foolproof solution. However, our team is fully committed to addressing this issue by empowering our customers with the knowledge and tools they need to mitigate its impact. We actively work to educate users on how they can optimize their settings and implement best practices to detect and reduce bot interference. By continuously refining our strategies and staying ahead of emerging threats, we strive to provide our customers with the tools needed to mitigate this issue.
What Can Courses Do Today to Help Mitigate this Challenge?
To further reduce the risk of bots and scalpers exploiting the system, we encourage the following business practices:
- Implementing online prepayment requirements to discourage unauthorized 3rd parties and malicious bots to further commit users to their reservations.
- Consider introducing non-refundable booking fees to further commit users to their reservations. If a tee time is cancelled, the booking fee will not be refunded, reducing the appeal for bots to secure slots without being 100% committed to the exact tee time.
- Require credit card information to secure reservations. This step would add a layer of deterrence for bots and ensure commitment from users.
- Implement delayed tee time cancellation. For tee times cancelled online, this setting will prevent the cancelled tee time from being booked again immediately. The tee time will be released for booking within a window set by the course, for example between 15-60 minutes of the original cancellation. This makes it difficult to resell a reservation.
- Enable reCAPTCHA to help detect suspicious activity. foreUP has an optional Google reCAPTCHA system in place. If Google detects suspicious activity, the user will be presented with a checkbox and may be required to complete a puzzle “Select all images with traffic lights”.
- Id.me integration. foreUP has an integration with Id.me in place that requires golfers to verify their identity.
- Reports – Regularly review foreUP reports to look for suspicious reservations, booking patterns and cancellation patterns that may be the result of automated activity or an unauthorized 3rd party booking tee times at your course.
- "Tee Time Sales by Customer Name" - This report will show the total number of tee times sold per customer over a specified date range. If there are customers with an abnormally high number of tee times, it may require further investigation.
- "Cancelled Tee Times by Canceller" - This report will show the total number of tee times cancelled per customer over a specified date range. If there are customers with an abnormally high number of cancellations, it may require further investigation.
- "Tee Times Booked Report" - This report will show details of each individual tee time booked or cancelled over a specified date range. If further investigation into a specific customer is needed, this report can be filtered to only show activity from a specific customer. Other useful things to look for in this report are odd booking times paired with “fake” looking email addresses- such as a booking at 2:00AM with a booker email of mbksjweiruou8482385@strange.com.
Industry Wide Perspective and Action
Notice to Perpetrator
Course may wish to consider engaging directly with the unauthorized third party, and requesting they remove your course from their platform. You may similarly consider engaging legal counsel to assist with such a request.
Association Action
This is an industry wide challenge and foreUP is working with organizations like National Golf Course Owners Association (NGCOA). Like any industry challenge in these modern times knowledge is power and we encourage you to reach out to local PGA Sections and the NGCOA and provide information and details on the platform to these parties, such as website URL, app name, and any negative impacts bookings from this platform is having.
Legislative Action
We are also seeing an increasing number of states consider and/or implement protective legislation around such activity (example New York State the BIRDIE Act in New York.
Wrap up comments
We want to make it clear that foreUP neither partners with nor condones any unauthorized 3rd party bots. We look forward to teaming with our customers and partners to combat this industry wide challenge.
For further assistance, please contact our Support Team at support@foreup.com or 800-929-5737