To open the golf tourism discussions for 2022, for both Southern Africa and in broader geographic terms, writes John Cockayne, I used as my base a reflection on what has happened to the sector over the last 18 months or so.
Most of the angst was universal, as were the challenges, whether you were a golf course or golf resort / hotel operator in Mandalay or Timbuktu!
In South Africa golf rounds numbers are up (an interesting phenomenon, which is being experienced globally), so some of the local lockdown level pain, in terms of lost rounds’ revenues, has been eased by this surge onto the country’s golf courses.
Golfers are certainly travelling locally (what other choice do they have!), but the uncertainties around international travel continue to linger, rather like a bad smell.
Although it might seem as if there is still no end in sight to many, I sense a developing optimism, so I shared this sense with several golf travel industry insiders, from across the spectrum, to see if the optimism was completely out of focus!
The panel is made up of a mix of hotel GM’s, golf GM’s, media and marketers and their comments were as follows:
Peter Dros – marketing and sales director at Fancourt on The Garden Route, South Africa:
We have more reason to be optimistic than at any other time during the pandemic as we go into 2022.
This is because a sense of pragmatism is coming into play, which largely hinges around the need to live with and manage the virus, as opposed to just trying to shut it out and ourselves in.
That said, we are very grateful for the incredible support we have received from our domestic market, and we have had a very busy season along the Garden Route, which we all desperately needed.
On the international front, we shall still need to be patient!
The new Covid variant is still present in our key source markets, but I do believe, as per the previous waves that business will bounce back quicker than we expect, but it will all be about timing.
As we stand, flights and lingering uncertainties around quarantine, PCR tests remain our biggest challenge, although the last real pandemic related protocols are being removed in many countries.
The hotels are ready, the travellers are ready to go, and so it is just a case of having complete clarity on process and procedures.
Low demand will continue to ensure great value and special offers, so if ever the time was right to find a good deal, it is now!
On a slightly different note, I read a very interesting article by Forbes Travel and I quote:
“As our world came to a full stop this year, we looked in the mirror to reflect on how we can best empower our guests to travel responsibly and become agents of positive change. And we realized that to reimagine travel post-2020, we needed to reinvent ourselves first, so we updated our offering to highlight more local and diverse voices.”
This really rings true for us at Fancourt, and we have had to re-look at our product offering and procedures, to ensure that our guests feel safe and comfortable, but also to ensure that we can meet and manage their expectations from a golfing and hotel perspective.
Budgets have also been cut, and we need to maximise returns from the available resources as a matter of course.
As result of these factors, we have had to tweak the way we sell and market to our trade partners, as well as to our direct consumers, and select our audiences to ensure that we get our best ROI on all our initiatives.
John Aritho – GM at Beverly Hills Hotel in Umhlanga near Durban:
We can be hopeful that 2022 will see the return of significant numbers of international travellers, but up to now, it has been a bumpy ride!
We are also keen to start marketing our newly Golf Staycations product, which has been developed with the Business of Golf, so we are optimistic, which is never a bad thing early in the year.
The local numbers at the Beverly Hills have been very good in 2020 and 2021, as many domestic travellers sought a local holiday destination, rather than risk the various outbreaks of the Covid-19 variant, and the dangers it posed to travel, flights and entry into various countries.
I do not foresee any hangover from the July 2021 unrest in Kwa Zulu Natal, and it has been interesting to see British inbound travel and holiday makers taking time, during December and January to explore the multitude of great golf courses in and around Durban.
Kwa Zulu Natal as a whole, has traded strongly from a tourism perspective, due largely to its variety of affordable coastal holiday destinations and wonderfully warm clime.
Bloomberg recently published the ‘Where to Go in 2022’ and it was very encouraging to see KwaZulu-Natal making the list for 2022, with a rather interesting link between Omicron and a holiday destination, which in summary read;
KwaZulu-Natal the relatively unsung, malaria-free region between Johannesburg and Durban’s Indian Ocean coastline on South Africa, accidentally wound up in the spotlight, when the Omicron variant was first sequenced in research labs in the province — less an indication of relative risk, than the trailblazing scientific contributions underway there.”
So, dust off the golf clubs, grab some suntan and head for the Durban for a staycation, and a great start to 2022!
Damian Wrigley – GM at Pearl Valley Country Club at Val de Vie Estate in South Africa’s Western Cape:
We have felt the absence of our overseas guests, but saw the return this year of many of our international residents, some who we had not seen for over two years!
The uncertainties around the travel protocols, combined with a revolving door of opening and shutting borders, has meant that making travel plans, with any type of certainty, was well-nigh impossible.
The local upsurge in interest in golf was certainly a bonus, as you commented, and we are striving to make sure that these gains are retained, nurtured and further developed.
Our product is looking good, with a right-sizing of staff and a move out of the covid business model.
Further to this we had good winter rains and a much milder December than usual.
The golf course has been busy right through the year, with the club not really experiencing a low season, which has put some additional pressure on the course, but it is holding up well.
We have every reason to be more optimistic than at any time since early 2020, although I don’t see this transferring into any significant volumes of international ‘feet’, until the third quarter of 2022, but the booking trends will be a good indicator of how the market feels about coming back to us and when.
Samantha Croft – Tsogo Sun Director of Operations KwaZulu-Natal region:
We are cautiously optimistic that the very worst is over, but anticipate a slow uptick in the numbers of international leisure travellers, from the end of the first quarter onwards.
Of course, everyone’s crystal balls are now thoroughly cracked! but as Omicron continues to appear to be less of a health threat than the previous variants (albeit more transmissible), then we have reason to be more optimistic than at any other time since the outset of the pandemic, and as we go into 2022.
Unfortunately, you were proved to be right about the fact that we would need to keep wearing face-masks for at least 2 years, so I hope that your other comment about the virus going forward proves to be correct too! If you recall you said that we must hope for a status where if we ask; “Where’s Joe”, the answer would be along the lines of “Oh he has a touch of Covid and will back in the office on Monday”.
It will be interesting to see how the landscape changes in terms of the types of travellers and what they ‘want’ in a vacation sense.
I recall Dermot Synnott (Destination Golf Travel Magazine) in a Business of Golf Magazine article stating that early indications were that golf travellers were looking to extend the time of their vacations to get more value from the airfare, and that they would be buying up to 4-star and 5-star properties, because the health protocols were perceived to be ‘better’ at these types of venues.
One way or another, it should prove to be an exciting year.
Dermot Synnott – CEO and co-founder of Destination Golf Travel Magazine in Ireland:
We are nearing the ‘end’ I feel, but there will still be potholes to be negotiated as we go forward.
My overriding sense is that the travel landscape has been changed irrevocably. This will include travellers (using commercial flights), expecting much less downtime with admin and the like i.e., they will be looking for a more seamless travel experience.
Indications are that already golf travellers are looking to stay away for longer, and that they are ‘buying up’ for what they see to be better health processes, rightly or wrongly, at higher star hotel units.
Movements within a vacation might well change too, as per Peter Dros’ comments in a discussion piece in 2021. about people creating one venue as a base / bubble, and then travelling out from there and returning to the same venue each night.
The pandemic trend, which saw an increase in the popularity of staycations and vacations closer to home (using a car or rail as a transport mode), which developed out of necessity might also continue to develop and grow.
Malcolm Bone – GM Sabi River Sun Golf Resort at Hazyview in Mpumalanga on the borders of the Kruger National Park:
We are really looking forward to 2022, and provided no new ‘unplayable’ variants come over the horizon, I feel that we are now approaching a point where we can live with the virus, as opposed to the merry-go-round (although it has been anything but merry!) of closed borders and lockdowns.
Structurally we are in great shape.
As you know we revamped the golf course in 2019 / 2020, and we have had good rains (not the monsoon type we got just before the delayed opening!), although we could now do with a little more sun (like most of SA!), all of which means that the changes have bedded in beautifully, and the course looks fantastic.
As the festive season rush subsides, our hotel eagerly anticipates bookings from golfers who have not, as yet, had the opportunity to test their swings on our wonderful ‘new’ golf course!
Robert Jasper – GM, at the Tsogo Sun Sandton Sun and Sandton Towers hotels in Sandton, Gauteng:
It has been a long road, and in Gauteng we still have units mothballed, as a result of the drop off in traffic, locally, regionally and internationally.
Are we through with the virus – I don’t think so, at least not quite yet!
I recall an article you wrote about 600 odd people dying of the Bubonic Plague (a disease known more commonly as the Black Death, which decimated medieval Europe) in Mongolia in late 2019.
The point you made was clear – these types of diseases are not cured, and will not go away, but history shows us that they can be managed and the effects mitigated.
So, to my sense for what might be a ‘rephrased’ future, I would comment that structurally our units are fine, the damage done was on the bottom line.
In answer to the question ‘what does the future hold’, it is a question of whether we at the end of the beginning, or at the beginning of the end (to paraphrase Winston Churchill) so I am not quite sure.
However, I am optimistic in the sense of how we are managing how we live with the virus, instead of just reacting to it, as this will become key to a long-term solution, and the indicators are that we are now starting to do this.
Ryan Dodds: Head of Golf Management and Projects – Mauritius
The demand for travel, and specifically travel to Mauritius, remains strong, we have seen this since our borders reopened in October.
Even more exciting is how quickly golf has rebounded, with Avalon, for example, having a record month in terms of rounds’ numbers during November 2021, this number being buoyed by the rounds played by tourists.
With our borders closing for a period to France and SA during December, we lost a few bookings, but forward bookings again look very promising.
With 10 eighteen-hole courses, and great weather year-round, I am optimistic that Mauritius golf tourism will continue to grow, and with a stronger local contingent of local players, we are in a fantastic position to tackle 2022 and beyond.
Adam Veysey: MD and Founder of Explore More Travel – UK and South Africa
It has been very good to be based in the UK (one of our key source markets), so that can see first-hand how South Africa and travel in general is perceived from the outside.
South Africa really did get the rough end of the stick when Omicron broke, and just as things were looking up late last year, the 2nd major lock-down really did break the proverbial camel’s back.
The results were mass cancellations and consumer confidence in travel to SA was shredded, and the UK media reporting was very harsh on South Africa.
That said, we have seen a great resurgence in requests for South Africa over the past month, which is very short lead time for our business, and the interest has been more from couples and small family groups, rather than any of the large golfing groups that we normally get at this time of year.
In terms of the latter, we only foresee golf group business coming back at the end of this year, and we are seeing a noticeable surge in golf group quotes and bookings for the 1st quarter of 2023.
On the ‘home front’, it is vital that South Africa removes the PCR testing requirements soon, which are just putting up another barrier to entry.
My PCR test a few weeks ago, which I had to have in Somerset (so outside London) cost £130.
For a family of 4 coming to SA, that would equate to over R10,000 for tests alone.
We are seeing a trend towards even more multi-generational travel, where grandparents have decided that after 2-years of lockdown, it’s time to get the extended family together, and do one of those bucket-list destinations…and South Africa offers ticks all the boxes in this respect, especially when combining golf and safari.
We are definitely seeing the more confident, early-adopter travelers coming out now, but when discussing with travelers, and agents over in the UK, both groups are still being cautious, to make sure no more variants rear their heads and countries lock down again, but are all very optimistic for travel from next year onwards.
So, the business right now is good, but it is still low compared to what we had in the past…. but from late 2022, and into early 2023, the outlook is very good.
In conclusion, and since the bulk of this article was ‘assembled’, in the period between mid-January and early February, I would comment that the barriers to travel have continued to come down.
After the strictures of the past 2 years, this augurs well for the beleaguered tourism and travel sector everywhere – so, and at the risk of tempting fate, 2022 might just yet turn out to be even a better year than the golf tourism sector had hoped for!
cathco@mweb.co.za