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Golfers will play through rain, wind, heat and cold. And, apparently, the current coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. and around the world.
From the West Coast to the East and stretching all the way to the United Kingdom, resorts and tour operators say that very few rounds and trips are being canceled in response to the pandemic. Even as the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. has risen past 600 and the U.S. death toll has climbed past 25, most people with golf travel already planned appear reluctant to cancel their trips.
Golf travel offers a very different story in general than the airline and cruise industries, which have been hit hard by cancellations.
“We have experienced no impact,” Bryan Hunter, public relations director at Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina, wrote in an email to Golfweek. “In fact, we just hosted 88 two-person golf teams for our annual Friendship Cup weekend, and we had no cancellations. We are obviously monitoring the situation and educating employees on how to be responsible, just as we would with any communicable illness. Kiawah Island Golf Resort is operating business as usual.”
The response was much the same at Pebble Beach Company in California.
“Pebble Beach Company is actively monitoring the Coronavirus (COVID-19) situation, and has taken supplemental precautionary measures to ensure the continued health and well-being of our guests and employees,” officials of the famed resort wrote in a statement. “These measures include resort-wide hygiene training and more frequent cleaning of public spaces. To date, there have been no reported cases of COVID-19 in Monterey County. From a business perspective, the impact to date on our business has been minimal.”
International golf booking companies have seen similar responses to the coronavirus outbreak, with a few exceptions. Gordon Dalgleish, president and founder of international booking agency PerryGolf, said he has fielded calls from some worried customers considering canceling their travel plans, but those mostly have been offset by new customers who are still eager to travel.
“In 35 years, we’ve seen hand-foot-and-mouth (disease), we’ve seen post 9-11, we’ve seen SARS, we’ve seen volcanoes in Iceland, we’ve kind of seen most of everything,” said Dalgleish, a Scotsman who lives in Wilmington, North Carolina. “The very strange thing about this (coronavirus), people’s perception of it are at the opposite ends of the spectrum. We can talk to one person who wants to tweak a tee time or add something on their trip that’s booked for July, and the next person thinks the world is falling apart and just wants out. It’s about their own personal level of comfort.”
PerryGolf sells trips to destinations ranging from golf stalwarts Ireland and Scotland to farther-flung South Africa and Tasmania. The company also sells golf cruises, where players travel by boat and sleep onboard, then disembark to play golf. These cruises include trips around the Mediterranean and Italy – which has been hit hard with more than 10,000 cases of coronavirus and more than 60 deaths, according to USA TODAY – as well as the U.K., South America and many other global destinations.
As with many in the cruise industry, Dalgleish was upset with a U.S. State Department warning Monday that travelers avoid cruise ships altogether. The cruise industry supports about 422,000 jobs in the U.S., according to a Washington Post story, and Dalgleish is afraid the State Department’s blanket warning is too severe with an unlimited scope that could cost thousands of people their livelihoods.
“Vendors for ships are getting clobbered,” Dalgleish said. “Can you imagine being a vendor in Florida right now? … The purpose of government is to be specific and concise and for the information so be secure, not to introduce more questions than answers.”
While the cruise side has been more of a struggle as coronavirus threats have grown, Dalgleish said the numbers for conventional golf trips have remained relatively stable.
Peak season for travel to the U.K. and Ireland is mid-April through early October, Dalgleish said, and people who have bought trips are approaching or already have passed their final payment dates. Those countries have not been added to warning lists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or by the World Health Organization. Some customers have called PerryGolf looking for reassurances, but in general they are keeping their plans.
Dalgleish also said PerryGolf is working with vendors to delay final payments when necessary, and that the normally strict terms and conditions of a travel contract might be made flexible to assuage fears.
“People fundamentally want to wait as long as possible before they have to make a final financial commitment,” Dalgleish said. “We have laid out our terms and conditions from the outset, but that’s under, well, let’s call it normal conditions. If we have to modify those to find that happy middle ground, to where it makes sense for the consumer and it makes sense for us as a business and they have to wait 30 days (to make a payment), then that’s what we do. We’ve worked with different folks in coming up with reassurances.”
Sam Baker, founder and CEO of Cincinnati-based Haversham and Baker Golfing Expeditions, said his international booking company has seen almost no impact from the coronavirus outbreak. Haversham and Baker mostly sells to country club members who travel in familiar groups with friends, and most trips are booked nine to 18 months in advance. Ninety percent of the company’s trips are to Ireland or Scotland.
“Right now, 2020 is the biggest season we’ve ever had by 10 percent,” Baker said. “And we continue to add to bookings for 2020. So it’s going to grow even more. And our early bookings for 2021 are also running higher than they ever have. So contextually, we’re not seeing any effect yet in the numbers.
“Having said that, we continue to monitor the situation really closely. I think that caution is the smart move here. We’re working with our suppliers (to promote guest safety).”
Baker said none of the 200-plus hotels and courses with which his company books are in areas flagged by the CDC or WHO. Still, most hotels have implemented new safety measures, such as frequent cleaning of high-touch areas – think elevator buttons, door knobs and the like, Baker said.
“As we’ve had people call us out of an abundance of caution, we continue to tell our clients what’s going on, and here are the facts on the ground,” Baker said. “Does that mean you shouldn’t be concerned? Of course not. You should be, and you should exercise caution.”
And Baker said he couldn’t overstress the importance of good travel insurance. With golfers paying an average of about $6,000 each for golf, on-the-ground transportation and hotels on a Haversham and Baker trip, he said it’s important to buy travel insurance from a major carrier and to read the fine print.
“There’s an old saying in the industry: Good travel insurance is never cheap, and cheap travel insurance is never good,” Baker said. “Don’t shop by price, and instead shop by coverage. … In all our literature, when people book with us, we tell them you really need to insure against a loss. We are having more people ask questions about that.”
Both Baker and Dalgleish said that despite the outbreak, many people will continue to travel to play golf, both domestically and internationally. Nobody knows how long the outbreak will last or to what extent the illness might reach, but it’s important to base any travel plans on realistic precautions and not on hype, hysteria or ignorance.
“When is this all going to kind of clear up? I don’t know,” Dalgleish said. “The reality is, at some point this will be in our rearview mirror. This is not the new normal. But it’s not as if somebody is going to come out one morning and blow the all-clear whistle. The reality is that people are going to be concerned until we start to see a serious, ongoing reduction in the number of cases and the news cycle finds a shiny new object. …
“Our view is that people, for the most part, want to travel and they’re just looking for some level of reassurance that travel makes good sense and they’re not just throwing good money after bad.”
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