Northwest Florida Golf Trail – Golf THE Beach
Posted on: November 23, 2009
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Coastal Vision 3000 Partners Combine Efforts to Market Regional Golf Courses As Premier Golf Destination
THE Beach, Fla. (November 19, 2009) – If one golfer can hit the ball 250 yards, can four golfers hit it 1,000 yards? Or eight golfers 2,000? The analogy may not be quite right, but golf course owners and managers across Northwest Florida are betting that more people driving an idea will make it go farther, perhaps to Europe and beyond, with the creation of the Northwest Florida Golf Trail.
Partners of Coastal Vision 3000, the non-profit membership group designed to market Northwest Florida under the regional brand THE Beach, are pooling their resources to create the Northwest Florida Golf Trail – Golf THE Beach. By banding together, golf business leaders believe they can make their advertising dollars work harder and let golfers from Washington D.C. to London know about the region’s outstanding, championship golf courses.
The idea started last spring with several Coastal Vision 3000 golf course Partners who wanted to market the shoulder seasons to national and international markets and let golfers know about the fantastic prices available from October through April. Traditionally, golf has been one of many activities available to visitors to the Northwest Florida beaches. However, with approximately 40 golf courses from Carrabelle to Perdido Key, offering a variety of golf experiences, from full service resorts to semi-private country clubs, Coastal Vision 3000’s Partners see golf as much more.
“We have great golf in Northwest Florida,” said Don McQuade, vice president of operations for Sandcastle Resorts, owners of the Bay Point Marriott with its two golf courses. “People in the Southeast have enjoyed golf as part of their vacation experience and now with the Northwest Florida Golf Trail we have the opportunity to tell the rest of the country and the world about golf at The Beach.”
Developers of longstanding golf destinations like Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Florida’s First Coast of Golf in Jacksonville know when golfers book their golf vacations, they want to play 18 to 36 holes of golf a day, eat, drink, and stay in great accommodations. They also buy equipment and clothing, and are repeat customers, returning again and again to play their favorite courses or try new ones.
The Northwest Florida Golf Trail will be a confederation of golf courses and golf resorts across the region that will market golf as one destination. Stating their purpose, “To create awareness of the Northwest Florida region as a premier golf destination both nationally and internationally,” creators of the Northwest Florida Golf Trail say the Trail will not initially engage in central booking of either tee times or accommodations. However, as the Trail grows, central booking is a strong possibility. Additionally, there will be no official Trail golf packages. These will be up to the Trail participants to create, but partnerships among golf courses, restaurants and accommodations providers will be encouraged in order to offer golfers the best deals.
To help drive the ball further, Coastal Vision 3000 is partnering with Visit Florida’s Play Florida golf program. Play Florida is creating a 32-page Northwest Florida Golf Trail guidebook that will be published twice annually with a total of 165,000 copies, 40,000 of which will be shrink-wrapped and packaged with the Play Florida guide to be distributed at 16 golf shows beginning in January, 2010. The shows will be held in markets like Cleveland, Detroit, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh and London, places where warm sun and a well manicured fairway seem like distant dreams in the dead of winter.
For more information about the Northwest Florida Golf Trail visit www.thebeachfla.com or www.northwestfloridagolf.com. For a complete list of golf courses in the seven county region of THE Beach, visit http://thebeachfla.com/things_todo_golf.php
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About Coastal Vision 3000
Coastal Vision 3000 is a nonprofit membership organization that promotes national and international awareness of Northwest Florida’s Gulf Coast as a premier tourism and economic development destination. The branded identity known as “THE Beach” is comprised of Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Bay, Gulf and Franklin Counties and presents the region as a single entity while promoting the work of local tourism and economic development professionals to grow the market to its fullest potential.
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