Trends Q: Did golf resorts get a spike in growth and engagement during the US Open?

In the past we’ve looked at correlations between golf resort transactions and major tournaments, but we also wanted to see if there was any correlation to something like Facebook likes or engagement that indicated interest or relevance. So, did resort Facebook pages see a spike? Here’s what we found.

The Goods
To find our answer we looked at the Facebook pages over 440 3-5 star hotels with golf courses and compared them to 3,100 3-5 star hotels without golf courses for the days leading up to, during, and after the recent US Open. We then found average growth and engagement for these pages for each day during this stretch.

First, growth:

And, second, engagement:

In both cases golf resorts saw a clear spike. Growth peaked at 0.13% for hotels with golf compared to 0.08% for hotels without golf on the same day. For engagement those numbers were 6.5% and 4.9% respectively.

What This Means
What’s most interesting about these results is when the spike occurs. The tournamented seem to spark the interest, but this relevance continued for nearly 10 days after the tournament was over.

In other words, if you’re looking for a point to pour fuel on the fire of your marketing efforts, consider the days directly after a major tournament like the US Open. Between the event and the time of year, interest in golf is peaking and, as a result, so is the relevance of your messages.

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