Lanzarote Golf
Golf is an important part of the overall strategy to lure more high spending tourists to Lanzarote. With the island’s second course outside Puerto del Carmen nearing completion work is expected to start on two new courses in Playa Blanca some time in 2007.
A further course is mooted for Puerto Calero and golf on Lanzarote already has one permanent home in Costa Teguise
Driving Tourism
Ever since the creation of the Canaries first course, the Royal Golf Club of Las Palmas in 1891, the game has been viewed by successive local governments as a means of driving “up market tourism” on the islands.
Today, golf features prominently in marketing campaigns for the Canaries, with players enticed to enjoy their favourite sport on a year round basis at one of the many courses now springing up all over the archipelago.
On Course
Last year an AETUR spokesperson stated that Lanzarote alone needed at least another five golf courses. The rationale being to give tour operators another platform on which to market the island and reduce the current dependence on ‘beach tourism´, alongside a belief that golf holidays generate a bigger spend per visitor.
It is however hard to pinpoint precisely when golf started to enjoy its current upswing in popularity
The American Way
For the real reasons behind the sports current renaissance we must look across the Atlantic to the United States. Here golf has never been saddled with the class baggage that once restricted the game´s development in the UK. The games big money prizes have also drawn the interest of a nation that believes making money is a god given right.
As a result the sport has attracted players from all sectors of American society.
Recently, for example, the American media carried the story of one Robert Atwater, a career criminal who had been on the run from justice for over ten years.
He only decided to break cover when, through a bizarre set of circumstances, he had the chance to play a round with his personal hero and all-time golfing legend Tom Watson.
On arrival at the course Atwater was immediately arrested in a classic sting operation. Yet he showed no regrets, stating, “I’d do the same thing tomorrow. Come on man, this is golf we’re talking about”! Such fanatical devotion just has to be respected!
Easy Tiger
America’s more egalitarian approach to the sport though is probably best illustrated by the stunning breakthrough of Tiger Woods in the 1990´s. Tiger was the first ever coloured player to weaken the stranglehold of Caucasian and Hispanic players in world golf and, therefore, became a marketing dream.
In Tiger’s case the marketing men were from Nike, a company already adept at building their brand profile on the back of black sportsmen in other fields such as basketball and using music to heighten the appeal of the overall package.
Nike deftly combined imagery of Tiger Woods with the blues of Bo Diddley in the groundbreaking ´Bo Knows´ campaign and before you knew it golf courses across the US were enjoying an influx of new enthusiasts.
Fore Kids
The games governing body, The Professional Golf Association, has continued to build on these new foundations. In the US they are already attempting to hook the next generation of players at as young an age as possible with their recent ‘Fore Kids’ campaign.
Now any young golfer who doesn’t resemble a troll is packaged as an arbiter of uber cool, a good example being young Brit hopeful Ian Poulter who recently dyed his hair red for the Augusta National.
One of London’s trendy boroughs will shortly be hosting The Shoreditch Urban Open, non-golfers are starting to drool over the threads of Stockholm based golf outfitters J Lindeberg and even hip hop artists such as The Beastie Boys have come out to give the sport credible celebrity endorsement.
In The Swing
Now none of this would be of great importance were it not for the fact that golf is likely to have a huge impact on tourism on Lanzarote over the next decade. That is certainly the hope of AETUR and the other bodies guiding the development of the travel industry on the islands.
So perhaps we´re all going to have to get up to speed, crack open some slacks and get swinging, so to speak. How else will Lanzarote be able to cater to this new type of guest?
Caddying could become the new bar work of the 2010´s and retrieving golf balls from water traps could surpass pool cleaning as a specialist service industry. Restaurants such as The 19th Hole and The Caddy Shack could spring up whilst golf buggies will become the number one vehicle hire business.
It´s all kind of hard to imagine really (and probably just a load of old golf balls).
But then again they probably said the same about bucket and spade tourism on a mass-market scale back in the 1960´s – and look where we are today.
