Founded in 2000 by former Golf Monthly Travel Editor Barry Ward, www.posh-golf-travel.com has been totally re-designed after 10 years and has also changed tack apropos its target market audience. Initially an on-line magazine offering advice on golfing holidays, it has been transposed into a marketing tool for selected five star golf resorts and their tour operators.
Under the sub-title of Golf’s Platinum Collection, the site now markets “The Finest Family-Friendly Golf Resorts and 5 Star Golfing Holiday Destinations” with a target audience of families, couples and groups seeking de luxe holiday venues with specific facilities and services. In addition, the site now offers its audience a resort reservations facility, either directly or via tour operators.
“We’ve always known that their expansive facilities make all-inclusive golf resorts ideal venues for family holidays or romantic breaks as well as for golfing groups,” Barry says. “So we have adopted this theme in our approach, with various categories of resorts, such as “family friendly” or “golf, romance and spa,” for instance.
“Then we extend this to destinations offering “exotic golf” or “beach and golf,” all broken down into national sections, such as the USA, Australia, France, Thailand and the UK. So there is a destination for any golfer, no matter where in the world he lives, who wishes to take his family/wife/girlfriend on a holiday that allows him to play a round or two of golf without feeling guilty.”
The new concept has its roots in reader response, Barry says. “We were receiving many requests every day from folk who thought we could book holidays for them but we didn’t wish to get into the ABTA thing so all we could do was refer them to resorts or tour operators. The system we have devised is a good compromise.”
All the subject matter has been personally researched. Barry says that over the years he has visited some 400 golf resorts world-wide and eventually about a hundred of these will be listed on the new site.
The new-look site, which replaced the original in early May, was designed by Dominic Ward, Barry’s son and the magazine’s Features Editor, using the SquareSpace system.
The site has for five years been ranked #1 by Google and other search engines under various categories of golf tourism. On May 12 Google ranked it #1 of 11.4 million sites under “golf travel + resorts” and it is on the first page of most search engines under such categories as “golfing holidays + resorts” and “golf travel + holidays.”