The golfing holiday is dead – long live the golfing holiday!

There is no doubt the economic recession has wreaked havoc with the golfing industry. Years of frenzied spending, with borrowed money, had brought a plethora of new golf courses/complexes especially in places like Portugal & Spain – long favourite haunts of Northern Europeans looking for the sun.

They were built on the belief there would be a never ending stream of people willing to buy apartments on those developments, while visitors would happily pay 100+ Euros a round. Those in the UK will certainly remember golfing legend Jack Nicklaus heavily promoting one Spanish developer.

Many warned a bust always follows a boom, but few took any notice as banks fell over themselves to lend money without asking too many questions, while planning permission never seemed to be a problem. On one well known Spanish development is was reported they were selling 20 apartments a day at the height of the property frenzy – could this really go on?

Well today we all know too well the answer was a categorical – NO!

You don’t have to drive too far in Portugal or Spain to see abandoned developments & golf courses which probably will never be finished. With this comes tales of people who paid substantial deposits in good faith, never to see their money again and with the developers going bankrupt or vanishing, little option to any recourse.

With the recession still taking hold throughout Europe then is there any hope things will get back to the heady days of the early noughties? Thankfully the answer is no.

But can a more normal service be resumed, well to that the answer should be yes.

The recession, if somewhat brutally, has brought a grinding halt to the building frenzy that took hold in Portugal and Spain. Several golf courses/resorts have gone to the wall, while many residential developments will never be finished.

So there is every hope that those which remain open and have survived the worst of the recession can continue to do so. The hope is we can move more to a balance between supply and demand. Maybe even more competitive pricing can increase that demand, certainly the low cost carriers such as Ryanair, Easyjet and Jet2 still seem to be happy to operate to Portugal and Spain even though you probably have to pay handsomely to take your golf clubs with you!

Also for those who have to endure a northern European climate there is certainly something very, very appealing about heading south to enjoy sunnier climes.