London, England: Sports Marketing Surveys (SMS) Director Richard Payne has addressed this year’s International Golf Travel Market (IGTM) Links.

The event, which precedes a planned physical event in Wales in October, follows a successful trial of the online networking format in Autumn 2020.

Payne’s presentation – ‘The Golf Tourism Recovery: A Golfer’s Perspective’ – showed how golfers from across Europe and North America are feeling about the prospect of golf travel.

It builds on a new, unreleased SMS study on golf tourism attitudes, perceptions and plans.

Reports are soon to be released to buyers across the golf industry and are available covering the market for golfers in Sweden, France, the United Kingdom, North America (combining the USA and Canada) and Germany.

Questions in the research programme cover a wide range of topics related to golf travel, including identifying the factors that will have the most impact on where, when and how golfers book their holidays.

As such, the findings will be an important tool for venues, tourist boards and tour operators as they plan their offers for 2021 and beyond and begin the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The research behind the findings took place over Christmas and New Year meaning that it was during lockdown, but also this was at the beginning of the global Covid vaccine roll-out, which looks set to be a game-changer for the travel industry.

The presentation also includes a sneak preview of an additional piece of research, a golf tourism segmentation study.

These results, the first of their kind in the industry, split golfers according to geography and demography, as well as by behavioural (how they act) and psychographic (how they think) factors.

Six segments have been identified as highlighted in the above illustration.

A Full Business Member of the Asian Golf Industry Federation, Sports Marketing Surveys regularly investigates the market for golf tourism and travel. In addition to producing downloadable reports like those outlined in the presentation, SMS also undertakes regular bespoke work.

It operated the economic impact of golf monitoring programme for Visit Wales in the build up to and aftermath of the 2010 Ryder Cup, and also expanded that programme to Northern Ireland, where the research helped Tourism Northern Ireland achieve their strategy of growing golf tourism to a £50 million industry ahead of schedule.

SMS also undertakes feasibility studies and market analyses for golf venues around the world, including a recent study on behalf of Golf in Dubai and an on-going project with Tourism Ireland.