Billion-dollar U.S. golf tourism industry has significant capacity for growth

2016 marks IAGTO's 19th year so Happy New Year to all of our media colleagues with an interest in golf tourism! I am writing to you today from the beautiful mountainous retreat of Kandy in Sri Lanka where we have just completed inspections of three of this lush tropical island's golf courses, two dating back to the 19th Century... Tomorrow we will participate in a press conference with the Ministry of Tourism in Colombo looking to the future of this country's golf tourism potential.
The global golf tourism industry is in a good place right now, as the results from our last three annual surveys and 2015's ground breaking Quarterly surveys have demonstrated. All of our efforts will, once again, be focused on creating the conditions for growth in established, emerging and undiscovered golf destinations, from lobbying on technical issues like VAT through to helping to position golf destinations to attract more golf tourism business.

We now have more accredited golf tour operator members than ever before - 605 in 60 countries, with a further 350 IAGTO Certified Golf Travel Experts in China, and 1661 golf courses, golf resorts, hotels and tourist boards in 87 countries.

We continue to refine our events, conventions, fam and press trips and with 26 staff and international representatives we can now deliver more services for golf tourism media worldwide than we could ever have imagined 19 years ago!

Those of you in the USA will be interested in the interim results from our inaugural Brand USA partnered USA Golf Tourism Survey (see IAGTO press release below) and you can also read about the progress being made by Tourism New Zealand in its efforts to grow golf tourism (see IAGTO news item below).
Be sure to keep track of developments and press releases every week and do not hesitate to let us know if we can help you further in any way this year.

2016 has already got off to a flying start and I would like to wish you all a busy, productive and healthy year ahead.

With my best regards,
Peter Walton, Chief Executive, IAGTO