I am so happy that Your Golf Travel came to the same conclusion as I did last July. In that post, I highlighted the Portuguese Tee Times Golf Agency‘s ‘unlimited golf concept’ as a great offer.
The reason why I found it great is that it is in line with the experience-based holiday trend. There is a rising demand for authentic and engaging golf travel experiences.
This is totally in line with Your Golf Travel’s latest market research findings. Namely, 70% of respondents expressed an interest in extra value offers, including unlimited golf and free buggies.
Based on this finding, Your Golf Travel and Chief Holiday Officer (nice title!!) Lee Westwood and their host of partners put together 2 interesting offers:
- If you book now your 2019 golf holidays you will get free value add-ons with their golfing holiday.
- Throughout September, a selection of incredible value add-ons, including free room upgrades, free buggies, unlimited golf and food and beverage discounts (up to 20%) will be made available to Your Golf Travel customers for venues across the UK, Europe and the rest of the world.
Your Golf Travel CEO Ross Marshall said: “We are excited to have sourced value add-ons at venues across the UK, through Spain, Turkey, France, Morocco and even Mauritius, Abu Dhabi, and The Dominican Republic.”
A new approach to golf holiday service and product development
It is very good that Your Golf Travel is also trying to focus on providing golf holiday experiences instead of golf holiday products. What is even more important is to focus on service personalization, inspiration, and self-discovery.
I am sure that savvy golf tourists are looking for a way(s) that is wholly their own. In other words, we do not want to follow the same golf travel paths as other golf travelers are doing, we want to have our golf holiday in our way.
People want to avoid sameness of so many mainstream golf travel experiences. This requires more flexibility, more tech integration (e.g. chatbot, mobile app, instant email confirmation, real-time online tee-time booking etc.) from golf travel agencies.
I would also think about how to connect golf tourists with local golfers so they can play together, but also build friendships and connections. This can help tourists to have a really personal, unique golf holiday experience.
What I see as an untapped area is: post-travel communication. This can provide a wealth of insights that can be used for product and service development.
If golf travel agencies would invest more in consumer data analytics they could find many more sources of revenue and personalize much better their services. Personalized services help to advance customer relationships as well.