Drive In Golf - Indoor Golf Facility

Meet Nigel Bratton, PGA Professional and Co-owner of Drive In Golf, an indoor golf facility in Derby with four PGA Pros. Drive In Golf has been open for nine weeks, starting immediately with the ProAgenda booking system, so they are very new to the game. Some five, six years ago, Nigel was giving a lesson in the rain and decided we needed to take our lessons inside. So together with his partner Lee, who represented GB and Ireland in the PGA Cup in the USA, and Daniel, a PGA Professional, they’ve decided to start their own Indoor Facility. Through hard work and dedication, they opened their own facility, and it has been booming from the start.

Choosing to take their booking system online was the obvious choice for Nigel: “Everything is online now. I’m a tech person myself. I want to book online, not have to ring somewhere or anything like that.” He used to work in a pro shop, and one of the first things he changed was taking the booking process online. It just saves him time. When they started their indoor facility, having an online booking system was the only solution. They immediately began their research and started using the ProAgenda booking system. “I looked at the features, looked at the price. Then I thought, ‘This works for us; let’s get started.’”

When researching and comparing different systems, they eventually landed on ProAgenda. It was the academy management feature that made ProAgenda stand out from the competition. Drive In Golf not only has bays and simulators but also offers multiple dart bays. “Now I’ve got one place to handle darts, payments, memberships, packages, that was the main thing.”

Starting with the ProAgenda software, some aspects required fine-tuning. The primary goal was to utilize various features to book simulators and lessons, both simultaneously and independently. “I wanted to direct people. If they didn’t want a lesson, they should just be able to go straight to booking a bay and vice versa.” Explains Nigel. With the branded features of ProAgenda, it felt like an extension of their own website.

Nigel continues: “Since we’ve started, 695 clients have joined through ProAgenda. We’ve had a great start.” He points out that clients found it very easy to book through the system. “There were no hiccups when we started, so it worked out great.” Clients can book lessons or bays without issues and at any time. Especially with the separation of bay bookings and lesson bookings, the process has become very efficient. It really shows how popular and important indoor golf facilities have become.

“Any time we’ve run into things, the support has been great. I’ll send an email and within an hour, I’ll have an answer. Support has been brilliant.” Nigel praised the quick support of ProAgenda. The support throughout the start-up process and afterward had been of great value in launching and opening the indoor studio. It helps when questions and problems are answered and fixed within a short period time. “Everything got sorted and it was very quick, support has been great.”