While much of the golf industry prospered during the pandemic, due largely to courses being one of the few places where people could safely recreate, the tour operators who make their livings sending American customers to the far corners of the globe to tee it up suffered greatly. So did the clubs and resorts that typically served those clients.
As an outdoor activity, the game may have been regarded more or less as risk-free, but that was only if it did not entail much in the way of travel. A car ride with a couple of close friends or family members was fine, which is why domestic retreats such as Bandon Dunes, Sand Valley and Big Cedar Lodge did so well. But getting on airplanes for trans-Atlantic trips to the classic links courses of, say, Scotland and Ireland was out of the question. And those individuals who liked to cruise across oceans with their sticks and down rivers on barge trips were also denied.
Bottom line, it was a terrible time both for golfers looking to travel overseas and for the travel companies who organize those expeditions.
But with COVID-19 mask mandates and testing requirements disappearing, things for 2022 and beyond are looking very good. In fact, international golf travel is likely about to enter a boom period of its own.
“Ireland and Northern Ireland are certainly open for business,” said John McLaughlin, chief executive officer of North & West Coast Links Golf Ireland, a cooperative marketing group for courses in that part of the Emerald Isle as well as a top-tier tour operator. “And we are all excited to have golfers coming back.”
McLaughlin might as well be speaking for all of the British Isles, to say nothing of more far-flung locales such as Australia and New Zealand. And the tour operators – as well as the courses, clubs and resorts they work with – are not the only ones putting out the welcome mats. The caddies and bartenders whose livelihoods depend on steady tourism business also cannot wait for golf travelers to return. Same with the restaurateurs who feed the peripatetic players and the drivers who ferry them from track to track.
Equally as fired up are the golfers themselves, and their enthusiasm to take to the road again has spawned a new phrase in the business.
“We are calling it revenge travel,” said Gordon Dalgleish, president and co-founder of PerryGolf, a leading golf tour operator. “It’s people who are trying to make up for the travel time they lost during the pandemic. So, they are looking to take more trips, longer trips, and oftentimes are upgrading from what they had planned to do pre-COVID.”
Getting to this place for international golf travel has not been easy.
“Basically, we moved everything we had for 2020 to 2021, and in some cases to 2022,” Dalgleish said. “And with COVID continuing to be a problem with the rise of the Delta and Omicron variants, we had to move trips again, to 2022. Some customers even began looking to 2023 and 2024, especially those who wanted to go to the most popular spots, such as St. Andrews or Muirfield, that quickly and completely filled up. Some kept the same itineraries, and some changed the courses they played or even the countries they visited. Whatever they wanted to do was fine by us, and in every case, we did what we could to accommodate them.”
Tour operators have worked hard through the pandemic to take care of their customers. At the same time, many of the hotels, resorts and clubs used the time to upgrade and enhance facilities.
McLaughlin and his group acted in much the same way with their golfers. And he chuckles at the situation in which he finds itself this spring.
“In effect, we have jammed three years of business into 2022,” he said. “And that includes trips that were initially booked as far back as 2019.”
But that does not mean that there is no availability for those golfers still looking to travel in 2022.
“A lot of the places we use and represent have multiple courses, which means there are still plenty of tee times,” McLaughlin said. “That is also the case with those spots off the beaten path.”
To make sure they can accommodate the backlog of reservations from international golfers and the pent-up demand for those looking to tee it up in Ireland and the United Kingdom, many clubs are reducing the number of tee times they usually offer their members – and meting them out to visitors instead.
Tour operators have worked hard through the pandemic to take care of their customers. At the same time, many of the hotels, resorts and clubs used the time to upgrade and enhance facilities, largely funding those projects on savings the fiscally conservative had accumulated over the years and with emergency funds offered by governments during COVID. As a result, the product in many cases has never been better.
Not surprisingly, the pandemic has led to changes in the ways American golfers organize their overseas trips.
“People are reserving much further in advance,” Dalgleish said. “That’s largely due to increased demand in golf travel and a desire to be able to book the places they really want to play.”
He has also discerned a greater interest in visiting some of the lesser known but nonetheless stellar spots – such as the north of Scotland, England’s Lancashire Coast or the north and northwest of Ireland – at least until revenge travelers are sated and demand for classic destinations such as St. Andrews ease up.
“No matter where they are teeing it up, however, people are excited about the next couple of years,” Dalgleish said. “We are excited, too. It’s great to have golfers taking to the road again.”