It has its advantages and is not without its difficulties, but managing one of the most complete and important golf resorts in Europe is undoubtedly a great challenge. And Sean Corte-Real, the tourism business management professional who has been in charge of La Cala Resort for a few months now, is not afraid of this challenge.
This complex located in the Costa del Sol municipality of Mijas has three 18-hole golf courses designed by the North American Cabell B. Robinson and an academy located next to the 6-hole par 3 course. It also has a soccer field and sports facilities according to FIFA technical specifications, and is the only golf resort with an 8-kilometer running circuit. The hotel has 107 rooms, three themed restaurants and a spa of more than 1,300 square meters, among other services and facilities.
Smiling, affable, with a commendable command of the Spanish language, the Portuguese Corte Real is a professional with a prolific career that has taken him to several continents. To his credit, he has spent more than 18 years dedicated to the management and leadership of golf resorts with great international prestige. With a Master’s degree from IE Business School in Madrid, he is a recognized expert in the management of high-level, world-class facilities, knowledge that is complemented by a new vision of hospitality and golf.
Corte Real began his career as a tourism professional. However, he spent four years competing as a player in high-level tournaments throughout Europe before moving permanently into hotel management. His first major position was at Vila Sol Spa & Resort in Vilamoura in the Algarve (Portugal). After a while, he was promoted to Golf Director. Corte Real laid the foundations for his future career, winning the resort numerous awards.
In search of new challenges, he lands in Iguassu Golf Resort in Foz do Iguaçu (Brazil) where he is in charge of promoting, as Project Manager and Director of Golf, the sports facilities in one of the most emerging destinations in the country. From there, he moved to Las Colinas Golf & Country Club, in Alicante, where he assumed the position of Director of Operations in one of the complexes considered a European reference in the practice of golf.
So running La Cala Resort is a new lease of life for him in his successful professional career. “I have found a fantastic product,” he says, “with three fantastic golf courses, a very interesting hotel, a large clubhouse, a wonderful spa, with which we are now nominated for Best Spa in Spain… There are very few resorts in Europe and in the world with three golf courses.”
When it comes to marketing a resort with three courses, he points out that with that number of courses “we create our own golf destination and that gives us the possibility of creating different and original packages, and another advantage is that in summer (low golf season on the Costa del Sol) we can close one of the courses for maintenance and save on water consumption, which gives us a lot of flexibility, and is also an advantage when it comes to organizing tournaments”.
“For example,” he continues, “now on the America Course we are changing all the bunkers and flattening the tees. Other resort facilities are also going to undergo renovation work, such as the hotel lobby, some of the restaurants, the golf courses… new menus, new chef, new ideas.”
-What goals have you set for yourself at the helm of La Cala Resort?
-It is always important to reach the top. So, a resort like this, with three golf courses and its location on the Costa del Sol, has to aim to be one of the best golf resorts in Europe, a European golf reference.
-The three La Cala camps together recorded some 90,000 departures last year. What figure would you like to reach in the future?
-The really important thing is that the golfers who visit us enjoy themselves, and of course the more players who come, the better, but it is also essential to maintain a level of quality and service so that they leave satisfied. There are two important references: quality and number of players, and the important thing is balance, so we have not set a goal or figure in that sense.
-What nationalities predominate among the golf clientele at La Cala Resort?
-As in the entire Costa del Sol, British and Irish are the majority, with 50 percent or so, and then there are the Nordic countries, a very strong market for us, Germany, France, which in the last two or three years has grown a lot, as has Belgium….
-Would you like to see more growth in the Spanish market?
-Of course, we are in Spain and the more we can do for this market, the better. I know that in the past the La Cala courses had a bit of a reputation for being very difficult, but the truth is that in the last three or four years, with the very good work of our greenkeeper, we have opened up the fairways a lot and counteracted the difficulties that we had in the past, and the reality is that now they are more like resort courses, more player-friendly. We would like the Spaniards who knew La Cala before to come again to see that the courses have really changed a lot.
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