A client books a hotel in the Dominican Republic because the rate looks good. Flights are confirmed, the trip is taking shape and everything seems sorted.<\/p>\n
Then comes the question.<\/p>\n
\u00abCan I play Teeth of the Dog?\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n And that is when the whole calculation changes.<\/p>\n Golf at Casa de Campo\u00ae is reserved for guests staying at the resort. Teeth of the Dog, Dye Fore and The Links are resort courses, not public ones.<\/p>\n So if any of those courses matters to your client, the hotel decision is not really a hotel decision. It is a golf decision, and it happens before you compare a single rate.<\/p>\n This is not a technicality you can solve later with a phone call. By the time the accommodation is confirmed and the client asks for a tee time, the options on the table are already fixed.<\/p>\n Most quotations are built in the order the information arrives. The client says Dominican Republic, you look at accommodation, you send a proposal, and the golf gets added at the end like an excursion.<\/p>\n With most beach destinations that order works fine. With Casa de Campo\u00ae it does not, because the access to the courses travels with the room.<\/p>\n Reverse the order and the problem disappears. Ask which courses the client actually wants to play, and the accommodation almost answers itself.<\/p>\n It also protects you from the worst version of this conversation, which is having to tell a client who has already paid that the round he was picturing is not available to him.<\/p>\n Comparing two hotel rates tells you which hotel is cheaper. It does not tell you which golf trip is cheaper. Those are different questions, and only one of them is the one your client is buying.<\/p>\n Once the client is staying somewhere other than the golf, the rest of the week has to be built around that distance. Transfers to each course and back. Travelling time on both ends of every round. Restaurants outside the property because the group is on the road at lunchtime. Sometimes a second car, sometimes a driver waiting.<\/p>\n None of that is on the accommodation line of your spreadsheet. All of it lands on the final invoice.<\/p>\n That cheaper hotel can suddenly stop looking quite so cheap.<\/p>\n Then there are your hours. Coordinating a group that sleeps in one place and plays in another means confirming transport for every round, rebuilding the day when a tee time moves, and answering messages during the trip that you would never have received if everything sat inside the same property.<\/p>\n You already know the difference between a client who wants a holiday with some golf in it and a client who is building the whole week around one course. That distinction is the most useful thing in the file, and most agencies never make it.<\/p>\n There is a second calculation, and it is the one the client will remember.<\/p>\n Staying at Casa de Campo\u00ae means your client wakes up where he is going to play. Breakfast, the course, lunch, another nine if he feels like it, or the beach if he does not.<\/p>\n The distances inside the resort are short enough that the day does not need organising. We wrote about exactly how short in this breakdown of the resort map<\/a>, with the real distance from the rooms to each course.<\/p>\n No car, no schedule, no watching the clock to make a tee time on the other side of La Romana.<\/p>\n Fewer moving parts. One property, one point of contact, one set of confirmations.<\/p>\n A group that plays and sleeps in the same place generates a fraction of the operational noise of one that does not. That is worth money to you, even though it never appears as a line item.<\/p>\n Sometimes it is. That is a fair thing to say to a client, and saying it is what makes the rest of your advice credible.<\/p>\n But sometimes, once the golf, the transfers, the hours and the meals are added up, the difference is much smaller than it looked at the start. And occasionally the resort simply makes better financial sense than the alternative that appeared cheaper on paper.<\/p>\n You will not know which of the three you are looking at until you price the trip as a whole. That is the only comparison that means anything. If you want the margin side of that conversation, we covered it in this article on Caribbean golf margins<\/a>.<\/p>\n There is an exception, and it is genuinely exceptional.<\/p>\n If you work with Casa de Campo\u00ae regularly and you have a case where a client is staying elsewhere but wants to play one of the courses, ask early. Some situations can be looked at.<\/p>\n What you should not do is promise the golf first and ask afterwards. That is the sequence that ends with an apology to a client who has already booked.<\/p>\n Send the dates and the courses, and you will get a straight answer about whether there is anything to explore.<\/p>\n There is a single question that reorders the whole quotation, and it takes ten seconds.<\/p>\n \u00abWhich courses does your client actually want to play?\u00bb<\/strong><\/p>\n Ask it before the accommodation is confirmed, not after. It tells you what kind of trip you are really selling, and it changes what you put in the proposal.<\/p>\n Golf at Casa de Campo\u00ae is reserved for resort guests. If the courses are part of the trip, the client should be staying at the resort. Exceptional cases exist for operators who work with the resort regularly, and they need to be raised before anything is promised to the client.<\/p>\n Teeth of the Dog, Dye Fore and The Links. Three Pete Dye designs inside the same property, which is what makes a multi-course week possible without a single transfer.<\/p>\n As soon as the dates are real. Tee times for groups are the part of the itinerary with the least flexibility, and they are always easier to secure before the accommodation is locked than after.<\/p>\n La Romana International is minutes from the resort, which removes the longest transfer of the trip before it starts. We set out the options in this guide to the closest airport<\/a>.<\/p>\n The client is not buying a hotel. He is buying a week of golf, and the hotel is one line inside it.<\/p>\n If you have a Dominican Republic quotation open right now, send me the dates and the courses your client wants to play. I will help you look at the trip as a whole before you close it.<\/p>\n Monica Diaz Vecino<\/strong>The question that changes the quotation<\/h2>\n
Why the golf has to be decided before the hotel<\/h2>\n
What a hotel rate does not tell you<\/h2>\n
The costs that arrive after the hotel is confirmed<\/h3>\n
The hours nobody puts a price on<\/h3>\n
The part that never shows up on the spreadsheet<\/h2>\n
What your client’s morning looks like<\/h3>\n
What your week looks like<\/h3>\n
Sometimes Casa de Campo\u00ae is the more expensive option<\/h2>\n
The exception, and how to handle it<\/h2>\n
One question before you confirm the hotel<\/h2>\n
Questions operators ask<\/h2>\n
Can a client play Teeth of the Dog without staying at Casa de Campo\u00ae?<\/h3>\n
Which courses are included in the resort?<\/h3>\n
How far in advance should the golf be confirmed?<\/h3>\n
What about the airport and transfers?<\/h3>\n
Do not compare hotel rates. Compare golf trips.<\/h2>\n
\nDirector of Golf Sales
\nCasa de Campo\u00ae Resort & Villas
\nmonica@ccampo.com<\/a><\/p>\n