Checked 8 and 9 October 2026. The full dataset and method are at the end, and available on request.
Fourteen of the 50 golf clubs we checked take visitors but give them no way to book online. Three of the 50 have an app with the club's own name on it. Not one lets a society book and pay for its day online. We picked the clubs by rule before we opened a single booking page, so these aren't the worst fifty; they're every third club on two county lists.
Fifty clubs, Surrey and Kent, October 2026
- 33 take visitor bookings online. 14 take visitors but want a phone call, an email or, in one case, a letter.
- Every proprietary course books online (12 of 12). About half the members' clubs that take visitors do (13 of 25).
- 40 show a visitor green fee without asking. 10 don't.
- 8 keep the booking on the club's own web address. 21 hand the visitor to a page run by their software supplier.
- 3 have an app in the club's own name. 33 rely on the supplier's shared app.
- 0 let a society book and pay online. 41 send groups to a form, a phone number or an email address.
Every proprietary course takes bookings online. Half the members' clubs don't.
All 12 proprietary and pay-and-play courses in the sample let a visitor pick a time online. Among members' clubs that take visitors, it's 13 of 25. The rest tell a visitor to ring the pro shop, email the office, or apply "by letter or email to the General Manager".
That's a Saturday-morning tee time going to whichever club answered the phone. A visitor looking at two courses on a Tuesday evening books the one that lets them.
"Book online" often means "make an account first"
On every intelligentgolf tee sheet we tested, picking a time sent the visitor to a sign-up page asking for a name, an email address, a mobile number and a password before any checkout appeared. intelligentgolf is the most common visitor booking system in the sample, at 15 of the 33 clubs that book online.
Because of that, we could confirm online payment at only 9 clubs, and could see a checkout step at 16 more. For 17 clubs we couldn't tell without creating an account, which we didn't do. Treat 9 as a floor.
The price is usually there. The way to pay for it isn't.
Forty of the 50 clubs show a visitor green fee without asking. Seven don't, and three only show it inside the tee sheet. One Surrey club links its green fees to a PDF hosted on Adobe's cloud; one Kent club shows a £60 weekday rate and then says weekend rounds "must be booked via the Pro Shop".
So the visitor can usually find out what a round costs. Paying for it there and then, so the time is theirs and the club's money is in the bank, is the step most clubs still leave to the day.
The booking leaves the club's website
No club in the sample sends visitors to GolfNow or any other marketplace from its own site, and one municipal operator says plainly that it is "no longer on GolfNow". That's the good news.
Even so, 21 of the 33 online bookers hand the visitor to a page run by the software supplier, under the supplier's web address, and only 8 keep the booking on the club's own domain. On members' phones it's starker: 3 clubs out of 50 have an app with their own name in the App Store. The other 33 that use booking software rely on the supplier's app, shared with every other club on that system.
Societies still pay by cheque
Not one of the 50 clubs lets a society organiser book a day and pay for it online. Forty-one route groups to an enquiry form, a phone number or an email address; nine have no group booking route we could find. One Kent club with more than 600 members asks for a £100 non-refundable deposit "sent at time of booking", with the balance settled on the day.
Society days are some of the best-value bookings a club takes all year, and they're still running on a deposit in the post and a spreadsheet of names.
What Tuvabook does about each of these, as standard
Every gap in that list is a default setting in Tuvabook, not a project.
- Visitors book on your website, at any hour, and pay in full when they book. The green fee is in the club's own account before they arrive, so a no-show has already paid.
- Your prices show on the booking page, by day, time and season, and you change them yourself.
- The booking stays with you. Your members get an app on the App Store and Google Play with your club's name, crest and colours, free to them and with no adverts, and your website booking page feeds the same tee sheet.
- Society days take paid sign-up in the app: each golfer registers and pays, the entry list is the catering count, and the money's in before the first minibus arrives. We've written up how a society day runs when it's paid up front.
It costs £149 a month for a single club, with no setup fee, month to month, and you're live in three weeks because we move your tee sheet, prices and members across for you. Everything included is on the pricing page.
Clubs doing it well
Four clubs in the sample show what a visitor should see. Hankley Common puts its booking rules and visitor rates on one page and takes full payment at the time of booking. Corinthian in Kent is online only, with card payment at booking and prices on the tee sheet. Royal Blackheath shows rates and FAQs on the green fee page and takes bookings on its own domain up to four weeks ahead. Hurtmore publishes a full rate table and asks visitors to pre-book and pay online with no booking fee.
These are what was publicly visible on 8 and 9 October 2026, not endorsements, and none of them is a Tuvabook club.
Check your own club's page
Open your website on your phone, as a visitor who has never been, and try to book Saturday at 10:20 and pay for it. If you can't, book a 30-minute demo and we'll show you what that visitor would see with your club's name on the app. If you'd like the full dataset for your county, email us and we'll send the spreadsheet.
How we did it
Where the list came from. The affiliated-club lists published by Surrey County Golf (110 entries) and Kent County Golf (83 entries), read on 8 October 2026 and saved before any club website was opened.
Which clubs counted. Clubs that run or play a course. Artisan, ladies', school, society and permit-holder entries and one duplicate were removed first, leaving 91 in Surrey and 76 in Kent.
How clubs were picked. Each list sorted alphabetically (ignoring "The"), then every third club from the first, giving 25 per county. The rule was fixed before any booking page was looked at. Five clubs were replaced by the next on the list because they had closed or had no working website; eight were kept on a corrected web address where the county listing was out of date.
What we looked at. Public pages only: home, visitors, green fees, societies, and the booking page they link to. No accounts were created, no forms submitted, no personal or card details entered, nothing booked. Apps were checked by searching the UK App Store for the club's name.
Definitions. Online booking: a visitor can pick a time and start a booking without contacting the club; a button that opens a members' login counts as no. Pay online: confirmed only by the club's own words or a visible payment screen. Own brand: the booking stays on the club's own domain or subdomain.
Limits. Two counties, so not a national figure. Online payment is a minimum, because 17 clubs couldn't be checked without an account. Mobile was judged from the page code, not on a handset. Club type comes from each club's own wording. The dataset, with a one-line note and the URL for every answer, is available on request.