Hole in one

Let me run some figures by you, as at the year 2000 the UK had 2.9 million golfers, Germany 760.000, Scandinavia has 660.000 and Europe as a whole around 6.4 million. Disregarding possible visitors from farther afield this is a very considerable potential client base.

You state that parts of the mainland are cashing in on the “alleged” golfing boom.
That's as bad as CNN keeping on saying – the “alleged” mistreatment of prisoners. Golf IS a growing market everywhere except the States where they have already been through that phase in the eighties and nineties. I was at STEPS (Spanish Tourism Expo for Professionals ) in London at the end of March. I took part in a Golf seminar where the various regions presented their plans for developing golf tourism. I won't bore you with the details but I can assure you the regional governments of Andalucia, Cataluña, Murcia and Valencia are pouring time and money into developing their golf tourism infrastructure. Majorca currently has eighteen golf courses. Three more are under construction and six planning applications are under review. This leaves three free 'slots' to complete the thirty courses that a senior member of the tourism administration told me was their ultimate aim. We neither have the land or natural resources to compete with Andalucia's 90+ courses and nor do we need to. Twenty five to thirty courses will be quite sufficient to attract large numbers of golfers to come here year after year.

Which introduces nicely my next point, why have the local hoteliers called for more golf courses? Because they know that the golfers will come and fill their hotels, and many readers' bars and restaurants at exactly the time they are needed – outside the main tourist season. Your valued package holiday tourist comes here for sun, sand and sangria and they find these things in midsummer. Outside those 12 weeks they are as rare as hens teeth. Golfers start coming in early February, and peak in March, April, May and October. Precisely when the hoteliers want their hotels full and the rentacars want to rent more cars. Add to the golfers the cyclists, the ramblers and to a lesser degree the yachties, who also favour midsummer, and you have a powerful off–midseason market that this government is crying out for. I will finish where you started. Is building more golf courses the answer to all of Majorca's ills?

No. Not to all by a long way but very definitely it is a step in the right direction.
John Little, Mallorca
Golf Connection
Editor's note: fair point Mr. Little, but the total number of golfers Europe-wide (your figures) is equal to the number of package holidaymakers who come to the Balearics at the moment. So every golfer in Europe would have to travel to the Balearics to match our tourism figures at the moment and the hoteliers still claim they are in recession. I agree that golf would help winter tourism, unfortunately, those same hoteliers who are calling for more golf courses shut-up shop in the winter and do not re-open until most of the golfers have left.