As private club leaders gather in Sarasota for the upcoming CMAA event, much of the conversation will naturally focus on the operational demands facing clubs today. But some of the most consequential discussions may be about what comes next.
Changing expectations are requiring club leadership to look further ahead. Long-range planning and governance remain central concerns. Artificial intelligence is creating new questions about how clubs operate, market and communicate. And in residential club communities, the relationship between real estate, membership demand and community value is receiving greater attention.
These may appear to be separate challenges. In today’s private club environment, they are increasingly interconnected. Among those bringing perspectives on these issues to Sarasota are three members of the Private Club Group leadership team: William Langley, CCM, CCE, CMAA Fellow, of Elevated Club & Community; Laurie Andrews, President of Cotton & Company; and Stephen Jara, CAM, real estate Broker Florida and North Carolina. Together, their areas of expertise point to three conversations that may deserve a place on the leadership agenda.
Looking Beyond Today’s Board Agenda
For General Managers, the challenge is rarely recognizing that an issue exists. Experienced club executives generally know where pressure is building. The more difficult responsibility is determining what deserves attention now, what can wait and what leadership needs to begin preparing for before it becomes urgent.
That is where long-range planning and governance increasingly intersect.
Bill Langley has spent more than four decades in private club management, including his recent leadership at Quail Ridge. Through Elevated Club & Community, his work today encompasses governance, strategic planning, operational leadership and recruitment.
“The best outcomes are the result of conversations that start long before an issue becomes a crisis,” Langley said. “Club leaders need time to look beyond today’s operating demands and ask what their boards and members are going to expect next.”
For clubs, that can mean looking three or five years beyond the current board agenda. How are governance expectations changing? Where could outside perspective create greater clarity? And what can be learned from approaches being taken at other clubs confronting similar challenges? The answers will vary by organization. The value may be in beginning the conversation early enough to have choices.
AI Is Becoming a Leadership Question
Another question is beginning to reach club leadership with increasing frequency: How are we using AI at the club?
The potential applications are broad, from operations and administration to communications and member service. But one of the most immediate places for clubs to begin examining AI’s impact is marketing and visibility.
AI is already changing the way prospective members and buyers discover and evaluate private club communities. Search engines and websites remain important, but they are no longer the only gateways to information.
Someone considering a club or community can now ask an AI platform direct questions about membership, amenities, lifestyle, real estate and competing communities. Those answers can influence which clubs enter the consideration set before a prospect ever reaches the club’s website.
That creates a relatively new objective for club marketing: AI authority.
Laurie Andrews and Cotton & Company bring more than four decades of development and private club marketing experience to the issue. The firm’s work increasingly includes AI-driven visibility strategies focused on understanding how organizations are represented across this changing discovery environment and how their digital authority can be strengthened.
“For years, digital marketing focused heavily on Google visibility, search rankings and website inquiries,” Andrews said. “Now a prospective member or buyer can ask an AI platform to compare communities and make recommendations before ever visiting a website. Clubs need to understand what those systems know about them, where that information is coming from and how authority is built.”
That moves AI visibility beyond a technology discussion and into the realm of marketing and leadership. What does AI know about a particular club? Is that information accurate? Which sources are shaping the answers? And does the club have sufficient digital authority to become part of the answer when prospective members and buyers begin asking questions? Those are questions club leadership increasingly needs to understand.
Real Estate’s Role in the Health of the Club Community
For residential private clubs, another leadership issue exists outside the traditional operating structure of the club but can have significant implications inside it: real estate.
Housing inventory, buyer expectations, property values and membership demand are closely connected. How a club community is represented in the real estate marketplace can influence the sale of individual homes, but it can also shape perceptions of the community, the membership pipeline and long-term value.
Yet real estate and club operations often function largely independently. Stephen Jara has worked at that intersection through Private Club Realty Group and as a licensed real estate broker in both Florida and North CarolinaC. His experience includes establishing and managing on-site real estate operations within private club communities.
“Real estate is often one of the first experiences a prospective member has with a club community,” Jara said. “That means the club has a strategic interest in how its lifestyle, membership and community value are represented throughout the real estate process.”
The distinction is important. An outside real estate firm’s primary responsibility is the housing transaction. Club leadership has a broader interest in ensuring that the lifestyle, membership experience and value of the community are properly represented in the marketplace.
A successful real estate strategy, therefore, can involve considerably more than selling homes. Lifestyle positioning can help drive demand, strengthen buyer perception and support property values—all of which can contribute to the long-range financial health of the club community.
It raises a larger question for club leadership: Does the community’s current approach to real estate support the future the club is trying to build?
Three Issues, One Larger Conversation
Governance, AI visibility and real estate may occupy very different places in the private club landscape. But decisions made in one area can increasingly influence outcomes in another.
That intersection is part of the premise behind Private Club Group, which brings experienced perspectives in club leadership and governance, marketing and AI visibility, and private club community real estate into the same strategic conversation.
The group will be represented at the CMAA event in Sarasota by Langley, Andrews and Jara, giving attending club leaders an opportunity to discuss these issues directly. The conversations are unlikely to end in Sarasota.
They are questions about how private clubs prepare for change, protect and communicate their value, and position their communities for what comes next—and they are increasingly becoming part of the leadership agenda throughout the industry.
