|
 |
|
|
                     
Copyright © 2003-2006 INV International Limited All Rights Reserved "As we grow old...the |
Time for teeing off in Greece Golf is wrongly viewed as a pastime for the rich and idle few that locals can afford to do without. But the sport's professionals insist it is the only cure for the country's ailing tourism By Dimitris Yannopoulos A lucrative investment opportunity and a daunting challenge for any country that aspires to the top of the world's holiday destinations, golf also offers Greek tourism a remedy for its endemic ills that inexorably drive it towards stagnation. On the one hand, Greece's eurozone status effectively rules out the use of devaluation as a possible price competition tool against strong rivals in Mediterranean mass-tourism outside the euro-area, such as Turkey, Croatia, Bulgaria, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. On the other hand, the country's overdependence on the "cheap" end of the global tourist market is compounded by its extreme "seasonality", with more than 50 percent of the annual tourist influx of 13 million concentrated in the two peak summer months of July and August. "It's an impossible double-bind situation, for which golf tourism offers the only way out," says George Drakopoulos, general director of the Association of Greek Tourist Enterprises (SETE). "The local hospitality industry remains hostage to the footloose crowd of global charter flights and 'bargain' tour operators, when it should have invested heavily in the special, up-market forms of tourism revolving around golf-resorts, marina villages, spas, conference centres and theme parks that offer year-round luxury holiday venues for better-off clients," Drakopoulos told the Athens News following the publication of SETE's report on "Greek Tourism 2010: Strategy and Targets". Why hasn't the country tapped the advantages of golf tourism in the past? Why does it risk missing the last chance for "teeing off" within the decade? How can the institutional and cultural obstacles to a robust growth in golf tourism and related luxury resort facilities be overcome on time? These were the key questions posed and debated at a landmark 2003 European Golf Investment and Real Estate Conference and Exhibition held in Athens on November 28-29. An untapped goldmine? "There could be no other opportune time to hold such a conference given the uncertainties facing the real-estate and construction industry as well as the Greek economy in general and tourism in particular, following the 2004 Olympic Games," said Napoleon Tsanis, chairman and CEO of the Australian-Greek partnership Albatross Investments and Developments which is heavily involved in real-estate and tourist projects in northern Greece. "There are fears that private investments especially in the real-estate field will dramatically slow down. Golf and real estate, a growing sector in Europe and a new starter in Greece, will be key elements in maintaining the economic growth experienced prior to the Olympics, while at the same time establishing a long-term viable solution to year-round tourism in an otherwise seasonal industry," Tsanis said. "Greece is sitting on top of a goldmine in foreign investment, which they are unlikely to ever see again," said conference chairman and Albatross' vice-president Alex Hillston. "If Greeks don't develop the market, the competition will. Their neighbour Turkey could easily fill the vacuum that is now present in southeastern Europe," he said. "The state has not yet realised how important golf is in saving Greek tourism from the quagmire of falling standards and revenues," said keynote conference speaker Michael Vranas, president of The Crete Golf Club, a modern golf resort on the Iraklio peninsula which took three years to "prepare" and only 18 months to build. "It was a unique venture in the sense that it brought together the region's top hoteliers in a determined and protracted effort to break the mould of Greek bureaucracy and spearhead the revival of tourism on the island with an investment of 20 million euros," Vranas said. "Just this new 18-hole golf course, one of the most modern in Europe, has increased luxury-hotel bookings in the area by 20 percent. And we still need three more golf courses of the same calibre to turn Crete into a 'golf destination' that will really start the ball rolling as far as tourist revenues are concerned," Vranas told the Athens News. Ingredients for a 'golf destination' Studies have shown that golfers enjoy taking their family holidays in places with a golf course in the vicinity for the occasional afternoon game. But when a group of golfers decide to take a golf holiday between themselves in the middle of the year or for a long weekend, their chosen destination must have at least three golf courses near their place of stay. This is what makes a resort a "golf destination"'. And golfers are "a very powerful and selective group of sportsmen-tourists who know everything about the different golf destinations around the world" which they may choose to visit for a group match. "Having proven that investment in golf is both feasible and profitable, we are now trying to bring more investors together in the area to built another two golf courses that will turn the island into a golf destination and upgrade Cretan tourism for generations to come," Vranas said. But the real "catch" which The Crete Golf Club offers investors is not so much their building and managerial expertise as their newfound "connections" with state and local authority bureaucrats whose customary licensing delays could scuttle any ambitious business venture, no matter how profitable it appears on paper. "We know the circuit all too well and we can guide our prospective golf resort colleagues through its maze safely," Vranas told this newspaper on the fringes of the conference. "All the new investors need to put up is the capital to build the two golf courses. And in two years, we can all start reaping the profits of a top-notch golf destination in the Mediterranean." About 200,000 of the tourists who visit Greece each year are golfers who would be happy to play in the country if a course were available. Golfing tourists spend an average of 40 percent more than regular tourists, said Dr. Aris Ikkos, a business consultant and director of JBR Hellas Ltd. Ikkos has done extensive market research in the field of golf tourism and supplied the data for SETE's projections over the next seven years. There are only five courses in Greece (in Athens, Thessaloniki, Corfu, Rhodes and Crete) which can hardly serve the "latent demand" for Greek golf tourism or provide the sort of localised diversity and competition of golf courses and facilities which golfing tourists and tour operators require to include Greece in their list of golf destinations. Unattainable targets? Greece's year-round sun and mild climate is ideally suited for the golfers' off-season holiday preferences. By combining Ikkos' data on the latent tourist demand for golf with the number of existing facilities relative to the population in other European countries, SETE concluded that Greece should aim to be endowed with no fewer that 46 golf courses by 2010. "This number is not just ambitious," said conference organiser Peter Heilmann of INVgolf, "it's utterly unrealistic considering the four years that it took the Cretan golf project to get off the ground. But this also shows the lucrative opportunity Greece has already missed." Apart from the delays due to red tape and the intractable Greek system of large-scale real-estate transactions, which Tsanis described in his sobering conference speech, there are other, less tangible, disadvantages that hinder the smooth teeing-off of a substantial golf tourism in the country. "There is a very simple reason one sees so little on the horizon in Greece, and not just in golf tourism," said Alan Egford, a Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) official who has worked in Greece for the past six years, advising golf resort investors on the intricacies of the infrastructure which the sport calls for. "No Greek is prepared to take the steps necessary to even begin a project -- let alone to see a project through," he said. "People here will listen, talk, philosophise, discuss the merits of anything with you. But watch them head off in the other direction the moment you go looking for some kind of commitment or a business plan to which they can be held accountable." Moreover, Egford believes there are strong barriers of prejudice and misinformation about golf, giving it a real "elitist" and "not welcome here" image which prevents the local population from taking to it and loving it. "This nation has to find a golf perspective, especially the government," he said. "It has to start with some genuine will and assistance from within the country -- to cut the bureaucracy, promote the game to the people, take away meaningless planning restrictions -- and from there, I believe it will take off without a ceiling." After lauding the many natural advantages of golf development in Greece, Lawrence Thornton, general secretary of the PGA of Europe, added a final precondition for the takeoff. "I conclude with a short answer to the question of the role of professionals in the development of golf: the fact is that it cannot take place without them," Thornton said. Judging by the lively and constructive input by the many professionals during the conference discussions, this is probably the only precondition for the development of golf which Greece has already met. Source: Athens News (December 12, 2003).
Introduction
| Programme | E-mail
| Disclaimer |
