Before You Choose a Golf Tour Company, Look at the Three Days After the Yes

Four booking requests. One operator. Three days in September. What came back to them in those three days is a better way to choose a golf tour company than any supplier questionnaire.

All four had the same thing in common, and it is not something you usually see so plainly on paper: the client had already said yes. Before anyone on the ground had confirmed a single tee time.

One of them put it in one line: Client has confirmed, so please can the resort send me the tee times.

That line is the whole problem, seen from the operator’s desk. The sale was done. The deposit was on its way. And the person who sold it had nothing to forward. No times, no confirmation, no email they could send on to the client that afternoon.

Closing a GIT before every piece is locked is not recklessness. It is the job. It means trusting the destination to deliver and having convinced the client of that. The hard part was already done.

What happens next is where suppliers separate. And there is one sentence that almost no ground partner puts in its first reply, which happens to be the one the operator needs. I will come back to it at the end.

Why you choose a golf tour company on the days nobody quotes for

Rates are visible on day one. A contract, a rate sheet, a comparison against two other ground partners, a decision.

What is not visible on day one is how that partner behaves between your client’s yes and the tee times in writing. You find that out with the first group, and by then there is a paid client waiting.

From the operator’s side, the problem is rarely the lead time itself. A tee time takes what it takes. It depends on the course, the calendar, the hotel and how many players need to go out back to back. Some days it comes back in an hour. Some days it takes three.

The problem is the gap. The stretch in which the client has paid and the only honest thing you can say is «it’s in progress». Which is true, and sounds exactly the same as when it is not.

A partner that takes three days but tells you on day one what will happen sells better than one that answers in twenty-four hours after a complete silence. The second is faster. The first gives you something to send.

What actually slows a tee time down

When a confirmation does not arrive, the natural reading is that someone is not doing their job. In the files we handle, there is nearly always another explanation, and it is nearly always one of these.

The greenfee is tied to the bed. In August an Argentinian agency asked for availability on two courses for five players, specific dates, no mention of where they were staying. There was no answer to give. At several of the resorts we work with, tee times go to resort guests first, and if the group sleeps elsewhere the answer changes completely or does not exist. It looked like a greenfee request. It was a place in a queue ordered by hotel.

The slot the client asked for does not exist. A Spanish agency asked for a fourball on Teeth of the Dog before 10:30. The course replied that no tee times are released between 10:00 and 11:00. What was available was 8:51, 9:18 or 12:15. The agent spent days chasing a 9:09 that never quite appeared. The client had said «mid morning» because it sounded comfortable, and that hour was not on anyone’s tee sheet.

The course is closed that week. Teeth of the Dog is in maintenance this very week, 21 to 28 September. Anyone requesting those dates does not get a quick no. They get an alternative proposal, and alternatives always take longer to build than refusals.

Sixteen players are not one tee time times four. Placing a group in four consecutive fourballs is a different job from placing one. A single slot turns up easily. Four slots in a row, same day, same course, need room on the sheet.

The clocks do not overlap. When a European office closes, a Caribbean pro shop has just opened. A request sent from London at five in the afternoon gets read there mid morning, and the reply lands when your team has gone home.

None of these five is the operator’s fault. None of them is the course’s fault either. But all five point the same way: the exact time can rarely be there on day one. Something else can.

The same-day reply you can forward: five lines

What an operator needs on the day the request goes out is not the tee time. It is an email they can forward to the client without editing a word, and that does not read like «we’re looking into it».

The replies that get forwarded as they are always carry these five lines:

1. What was requested, exactly. Dates, course, number of players, time band. Written back, so the operator can see it was understood before anyone moves.
2. What it depends on. Whether the tee time is tied to the hotel, whether the course has maintenance on those dates, whether the requested band exists. One sentence.
3. The day the answer arrives. A named day. Not «shortly», not «as soon as possible». Thursday.
4. What happens if the requested time is not there. The alternative already thought through: no 10:30, so 9:18 or 12:15, and this is what changes in the client’s day with each.
5. Who flags it if anything moves before then. A name and a channel. So nobody has to write on Wednesday asking whether Monday’s email arrived.

With those five lines, the operator can send the client something that sounds like control the same afternoon, even though the time does not exist yet: it’s requested, you’ll have it in writing on Thursday, and if 10:30 isn’t there I’ll put you on at 9:18.

The client did not need the time today. They needed to know somebody had it in hand.

Four things that tell you who you are dealing with

Nobody needs to risk a group to find this out. A simple request, sent before the first contract is signed, shows most of it within a day. Four things are worth watching.

What comes back on the same day. Not the full answer. Whatever arrives first. A reply with the request, the dependencies and a date has already answered the important question. Silence, or «received, thanks», has answered it too.

Whether they ask where the group is sleeping. A partner who quotes tee times without asking about the hotel either controls every course they sell, or has not yet run into the resort-guest rule. It is worth knowing which.

Whether they know the tee sheet. A request for 10:30 on a course with a gap between 10:00 and 11:00 is a quick test. A partner who knows the sheet tells you straight away and offers the times either side. One who does not will go looking, and come back three days later with the same news.

Who writes when there is nothing new. This is the one that decides the relationship, and it is the one almost nobody checks in advance.

Operators who have sold golf for years end up choosing ground partners on this more than on rates, though they rarely put it that way. They say something shorter: with these people I don’t have to chase anyone.

If you want to see what happens after the time is secured, when it has to become paper before you can invoice, we walked through it with a real group here. And if the course in question is Teeth of the Dog, this is how the Casa de Campo® tee sheet works from the inside, two bands and the hour that is not on it.

The sentence almost nobody writes

I said at the start that there is one sentence almost no ground partner puts in its first reply.

It is this: even if there is no news, I’ll write to you on Thursday.

Not the tee time. Not the alternative. A commitment to write again on a set date, with an answer or without one.

It looks small. It turns three days of silence into three days of waiting with a date on them. And a client who is waiting with a date does not phone. Neither does the operator.

At Global Hemisphere, when a request comes in with the client already confirmed, the first thing that leaves here is not the time. It is that email. The time follows on the day we said it would.

The operator with the four requests did not need us to be faster. They needed something to forward the same day.

And when the group is mixed, golfers and partners, that reply carries a sixth line for the people who are not playing. We covered that here.

If you have a request stuck right now

Email me at info@globalhemisphere.com with the request that is waiting: dates, number of players and the time band your client wants.

The same day, I will tell you what it depends on, what the alternative is if the requested time is not there, and which day you will have it in writing. Casa de Campo®, Madrid, Panama, Lanzarote or Playa Granada.

Something you can forward to your client that afternoon.