Murray Blair

Murray Blair

The reimagination of club and resort businesses is in full swing with strategically crafted and nurtured brands driving value creation for savvy owners and operators.
EDUCATION:
Bachelor’s Degree, Marketing, Ferris State University
Associate’s Degree, General Studies, Arizona Western
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Bio

Murray Blair is a Director with GGA based in the firm’s Toronto office. As a respected club, resort, and branding executive, Murray specializes in club and resort strategy, operations, brand building, transformation and performance monitoring.

Murray continues to build upon GGA’s market-leading strategy and operations consulting services and leverages the firm’s robust research and analytics offerings to help clients transform their businesses and implement a game plan for long-term success and sustainability.

Murray’s club leadership experience, history of managing premium brands, and dynamic charisma are perfectly aligned to deliver on GGA services focused on performance monitoring, brand positioning, strategy evolution, and maximizing performance over the long-term.

After a successful eight-year stint leading transformations for a large retail brand and one of the top private clubs in the Greater Toronto Area, Murray rejoined GGA to expand on what has already been a multifaceted career in the club and resort industries. Most recently, Murray was the General Manager at Granite Golf Club, one of Canada’s most innovative private family golf clubs, successfully rejuvenating the club’s brand and membership.

Prior to joining Granite Golf Club, Murray spent three years as Vice President at Joe Boxer, modernizing the garment brand for the Caulfield Apparel Group and leading Joe Boxer through an award-winning rebranding process that revitalized the brand, ultimately earning a 2014 Cassies Bronze medal.

Over the course of his career, Murray has also worked for the TPC organization as part of the opening team at TPC Scottsdale; spent four years with Marriott hotels in Arizona and Napa, California; ten years running the golf division for Fairmont Hotels, during which time he was ranked as one of the top 25 most influential people in Canadian Golf; and three years as a Vice President with ClubLink before his initial four years of consulting with Global Golf Advisors.

Through these experiences, Murray has been involved in the development and restoration of a number of great golf courses in North America including Banff Springs, Jasper Park Lodge, The Algonquin Resort, and Mayakoba in Mexico. Murray is active across the club industry serving on a number of advisory boards, including the Golf Ontario board, and delivers education sessions at various industry conferences.