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By Jimmy
Johnson
Of all the forms of special tourism,
golf tops the list as the most potentially lucrative.
With just six courses, Greece is seen as an untapped
market for golf course development. By contrast,
Spain has more than 250 courses.
According to a study undertaken by
Ikkos on behalf of the Association of Tourist Enterprises
(SETE) Greece should have 47 golf courses by 2010
to match Spain’s corresponding population and
resort location parameters. "With just five
or six golf courses, you cannot compete with Spain’s
250 and Portugal’s 55," said SETE chairman
Stavros Andreadis.
Deputy Economy and Finance Minister
Petros Doukas stresses that the Game’s growth
in Greece is among the government’s key objectives
as far as tourism is concerned. "The government
is committed to assisting the development of new
golf courses throughout the country as part of its
tourism modernization drive," says Doukas,
who is also president of the Hellenic Golf Federation.
"The state has not yet realized
how important golf is in saving Greek tourism from
the quagmire of falling standards and revenues,"
says Michael Vranas, president of the Cretan 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 $26.6 million...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 caliber to turn Crete into a ‘real’
golf destination."
Besides the Greek capital’s
Glyfada Golf Course on the southern coast, a well-established
club that is nevertheless anticipating major expansion,
other 18-hole facilities now operating locally include
the Porto Carras Golf and Country Club in Halkidiki,
northern Greece, the Corfu Gold Club in the northern
Ionian Sea, Afandou Golf Club on Rhodes and the
Crete Golf Club in Hersonissos. Numerous other courses
are in the planning stages. A smaller, nine-hole
course in Elounda resort on Crete is trying to acquire
more land in order to expand to international standards.
According to Ikkos, golfing tourists
spend an average of 40 percent more than regular
tourists. Golfers are not only higher-end tourists
with far greater spending power, they are also season-free
and seekers of variety in the setting of their games.
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.
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.
The harsh reality for Greece, however,
is that most existing golf courses are lacking in
attractiveness and quality of auxiliary tourist
services, let alone proximity to other golf courses
of the same standard. Extensive bureaucratic hurdles,
antiquated land regulation and the lack of town
planning and zoning registries discourage many foreign
and domestic investors.
For the first time, however, an inner
cabinet session in February, chaired by Prime Minister
Costas Karamanlis, decided to "do all that
is needed to disentangle major investment projects
from the maze of red tape and contradictory licensing
legislation." New zoning rules and stricter
deadlines on license approvals are among the first
measures to be tabled in parliament for April.
As many as 11 planned resort complexes
include one or more 18-hole golf courses in their
building plans, totaling $2.6 billion in budgeted
capital outlays. Greek and foreign investors have
been waiting for state clearance for these large-scale
ventures for anywhere between 3-10 years. The time
has come for their arduous efforts and perseverance
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Greece 
