Golf BC Group has taken over management of Blue Ocean Golf Club through an agreement with owner Edison Wang.
“Andy Hedley is our executive VP of golf operations for Golf BC in Vancouver and he met Edison Wang at the EM group. They discussed the opportunity and both parties liked it,” said Blue Ocean’s new general manager, Ken Langdon.
“It is a new arrangement for both parties and neither had gone down this road for a management contract before, outsourced as it were, but it’s a mutually beneficial situation.”
Golf BC Group, Western Canada’s largest golf course owner and operator, officially added Blue Ocean Golf Club to its portfolio that includes 12 other golf courses throughout B.C. and Maui in July.
The company appointed Langdon, a Class A golf professional with the PGA of Canada and former Olympic View Golf Club sales and events manager, to take over management of the club in Sechelt.
He moved from Victoria to Sechelt with his wife over the summer and started in his new role at Blue Ocean on July 5.
Langdon said he spent the first month on the Coast assessing things at the club and the second month making plans to improve the customer experience.
September will see a few changes, such as better advertised specials, a single point of contact for all events at the club and a new “simplified and refreshed” menu at the club’s bar and grill.
Langdon will be in charge of coordinating events at Blue Ocean now, whether it be a golf tournament or a wedding, to make things easier for the public. In the past, customers needed to speak with several people to coordinate events.
“We want to be a little bit more responsive to the market and get people out to Blue Ocean a little more,” Langdon said.
On that note, Langdon said he’s been working to improve transaction times in the golf shop. “When a guest arrives here we need to get them processed a lot faster,” Langdon said.
He said he’s looking forward to next year, when new systems are solidly in place and more events are planned for the public.
“That’s when a lot of the benefits will show up because right now it’s been mostly testing and figuring out how to move forward – and now we’re just in that transition period where we’re starting to do some fun things and 2018 will hopefully really be a better experience up here,” Langdon said.
He noted building a hotel on the site is still the long-term plan of the golf course and that finding a new source of water to keep the greens fresh in the future is essential.
“Water is still an issue for us. We only use the water we store on site for irrigation in the summer, so sometimes on the course – especially after extended periods of drought, which we’re facing right now – we literally have to let parts of the course go brown on us, but we manage that very carefully day by day,” Langdon said.
“In the long term, we’re hoping to get a better handle on our water supply.”
Keep up to date with what’s going on at Blue Ocean at www.blueoceangolf.ca
