There are golf courses where you can enjoy not only the game and a challenging course, but also an environment where nature surrounds everything.
La Estancia Golf Club, with 18 holes, is one of those fortunate layouts with no buildings or urbanizations in sight. Located in Sancti Petri, in the heart of the Costa de la Luz in Cadiz, a few hundred meters from the spectacular Playa de la Barrosa, where there is a hotel offer of the highest level, with a score of establishments of 4 and 5 stars.
The enviable natural environment of the layout together with the in-depth reforms it underwent in 2011 and 2012, which ostensibly improved it, have made La Estancia the revelation course of this tourist destination located in the municipality of Chiclana de la Frontera.
Not in vain, it is the course in this area that has seen the greatest percentage increase in the number of green fees in the last two years. “We started in 2009 with 7,000 annual tee times, and last year we already exceeded 28,000,” says Carlos de Avilés, its managing director.
Customer satisfaction has also increased. “It’s been spectacular,” he explains: “We have a 65 percent repeat business from our winter players, and our package with other courses in the area is the most requested, especially by Germans.”
The great quantitative leap in green fee sales occurred in 2016 with respect to 2015, with a 20 percent increase, “and this year,” says De Avilés, “the occupancy figures are yielding even more spectacular results, with increases of 50 percent over 2016.”
One of the key factors in this large increase in visitors is due to the aforementioned in-depth renovation that completely renovated the course, making it much more attractive.
The renovation consisted of changing the entire lawn of the streets by planting paspalum maginatum, which allows significant water savings “It is one of the problems we had in summer, “explains the managing director of La Estancia, “and also allows us to irrigate with a very poor quality water because it resists tremendous salinity, which allows us to have a maintainable and sustainable quality standard throughout the year”.
The opinion of the players, “which is what matters most to us, and is also based on statistics from direct surveys we carry out,” is overwhelmingly positive. “Eighty-five percent of the players leave satisfied or very satisfied, and then it is true that there are 10 percent who say nothing and 5 percent who express some complaint, generally of little importance.”
Thanks to the wide range of hotels in the area, where new establishments continue to open, the Sancti Petri destination has been increasingly consolidated. This year has already opened a new hotel and is expected to open two more next year, “so the occupancy expectations are very positive,” said De Avilés.
Another good news for this tourist destination on the coast of Cadiz is the increase of flights to the area. “Thomas Cook (one of the big European tour operators) has put this year two weekly flights throughout the winter, something that is the first time that happens at least in the last nine years. And for next year it seems that there is another big tour operator that is willing to put two or three weekly frequencies to Germany”.
With the data in hand, it can be affirmed that La Estancia, with an excellent quality/price ratio, is the revelation course of the last few years in Sancti Petri. “It’s wrong for me to say so, but the truth is that it is,” he corroborates.
Radical transformation
The transformation that the course underwent during two years could be described as radical. It went from being a course with a magnificent design but with some deficiencies to being one of the references in the area after having made the improvements it needed. It took a 180-degree turn with the change of the entire vegetation layer of the course, with the adaptation of the irrigation system, with the tweaks and improvements that have been made in the design, without modifying it substantially. Two new lakes were added and the total distance was increased to 6,390 meters from white.
The course is purely commercial, pay and play, and the vast majority of those who play it for the first time are surprised by the quality of this course, which remains one of those unknown gems that occasionally surprise us when we discover them.
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