Today’s members don’t see the mobile app as a utility. They see it as a digital extension of the club experience. That was the opening line of our recent Premium App webinar, and the rest of the session put it to the test: a side-by-side look at the Generic App, the Custom App, and the Premium App across four areas where members feel the difference every day.
The session kept returning to one question: where are you? Not where the technology is, but where your club stands against what members already expect. Here are the four areas it covered, and the questions worth asking about your own app. At the bottom, the easiest way to make sure you never miss the next session.
Customization: does your welcome feel like your club?
In hospitality, everything starts with the welcome. On a generic app, that welcome is a list of buttons that could belong to any club, or none. The Premium App is branded from the very first tap: a splash screen with your logo, a login screen in your colors, and a choice of home screen expressions, from a full video background to tiles to personalized widgets.
Behind the look sits the bigger shift: control. Where the generic and custom apps offer fewer than five configurable visual components, most requiring a developer to change, the Premium App puts roughly 80 in your hands, adjustable anytime with no code. And role-based navigation means a social member never sees golf booking, a prospect sees a preview built to excite them, and staff get their own tools inside the same app. Members expect this: 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions, and 76% feel frustrated when it doesn’t happen (McKinsey).
Access: how many forgotten-password calls did your front desk take this week?
All three tiers support multi-factor authentication, but only the Premium App adds biometric login, in-app member registration, and self-serve password reset. Small features on paper, but they are the difference between a member opening the app in one second and a call to the front desk.
The bigger story was the digital key. Through integrations with Salto and Avigilon, the phone becomes the key to the gate, the locker room, the courts, and after-hours fitness access. No cards to replace, no staff stationed at a door, instant deactivation when a membership changes, and real-time access logs that show how your facilities are actually used. Hospitality already proved the demand: keyless entry lifts guest satisfaction by 7%, and 46% of travelers now consider mobile key a must-have (Hotel Tech Report).
Communication: does every member get the same message?
The session’s most vivid example: a member on the 9th hole with 90 minutes left in their round. Can you put a food and beverage order prompt in front of them right then? With geolocation-based push, the Premium App can. The same engine delivers a personalized welcome the moment a member arrives on property, alerts golf staff when a member with a tee time pulls in, and can notify the membership director when an important member walks through the gate.
Recurring campaigns let you configure the message, schedule, and audience once and let delivery run itself, with emojis, images, and links that make messages worth opening. And geofence-crossing reports turn all of that movement into insight: which facilities get used, when, and by whom. It matters because 72% of consumers only engage with messages that align with their interests.
AI: how many of the same questions does your staff answer every day?
The final section introduced the in-app AI chatbot, currently in beta. The early adopter story landed hardest: one club’s rulebook ran more than 20 pages, with a dress code section that was four pages on its own. No member reads that. They call the front desk, and staff either memorize the rules or speed-read a PDF while the member waits on the line. With the AI concierge, the same question gets an instant, accurate, short answer pulled from those same 20 pages.
The beta handles general Q&A from your club’s own documents and webpages, protected by Microsoft enterprise-grade security and industry-standard PII handling. Bookings and member requests are on the roadmap for the next phase. The appetite is already there: 94% of customers opt to speak to AI agents when given the option (Forbes), and companies using AI report a 37% drop in first response times (Gorgias).
The full picture
The session closed with the complete feature comparison across all three tiers, from home screen choices to biometric login to the AI chatbot, plus one line that summarizes the whole decision: the generic and custom apps receive maintenance only, while the Premium App receives every new feature going forward. Watch the full session below to see the side-by-side for yourself.