Golf course investments could help lure Chinese tourists to the Grand Strand BY ALAN BLONDIN AND STEVE JONES-ablondin@thesunnews.com, sjones@thesunnews.com March 21, 2015 Teaching pro Dan Farrow works with Zhongde Li on his posture and grip. Golf instructor and master golf professional Brad Redding of the Grande Dunes Golf School leads a three-hour international golf clinic at the Members Club driving range Sunday morning. The golfers have traveled from China to participate in this Year s World Amateur Handicap Championship. Chinese investors have purchased 13 golf courses in the past year and a half on the Grand Strand. BY MATT SILFER For The Sun News Myrtle Beach tourism leaders have made an imprint in China. Between efforts made by the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and marketing cooperative Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday, they have managed to get the Grand Strand featured in a travel piece on China s largest cable network, videos on a Chinese international airline, and magazine articles, additional TV shows and billboards in China. But now that investors from China have rooted on the Strand through the purchase of 13 golf courses and other properties, the investors are doing much of the promotional work for them, and the assistance should expedite and increase the flow of Chinese tourists to Myrtle Beach.
With individuals now that have invested in our market, and their resources and connections in China, they can make it happen a lot faster, Golf Holiday president Bill Golden said. The Chinese investment company Yiqian Funding that has purchased eight Strand golf courses in the past six months has recently spawned travel, golf and real estate departments to support its foray into Myrtle Beach, according to Xian Nick Dou, a New York immigration attorney who has represented the company in the course sales. We set up a travel department in China to take care of people and take them to Myrtle Beach for golf, shopping, the ocean, everything, even to buy a house, Dou said. We will continue to bring more people. We will let everybody know where is Myrtle Beach, where is the paradise of the golf world. The company s first big tourism splash is a group of about 60 from China traveling to Myrtle Beach in late April for the wedding of Dan Liu, a China resident and company representative. The wedding is April 28 and the group is expected to arrive on April 25 and remain for about a week before visiting New York. Dou expects group members to experience golf, shopping, deep sea fishing and other area attractions, as well as look at real estate. We want them to spend money in Myrtle Beach, Dou said. The wedding is expected to include up to a couple hundred guests, consisting largely of people they ve met in Myrtle Beach including Mayor John Rhodes and possibly other dignitaries. We have made a lot of good relationships, Dou said. Dou expects Liu s wedding to be just a beginning. This is our first step, he said. Dan s wedding party will be a model. We will bring it back to China to bring more people. So we ve started. In Myrtle Beach we have future plans; we plan to do a lot of things. Chinese investment in U.S. travel destinations that will be marketed to Chinese travelers is a recent but growing trend, said Cassie Gao of the Rhodium Group, which tracks Chinese investment in the U.S. The golf course buys along the Grand Strand are not the largest Chinese travel investment in the U.S., she said, but they are significant because of the number of courses involved and the speed with which they were purchased. More importantly for Strand travel interests, though, Gao said the Myrtle Beach area purchases are the only cluster of U.S. golf courses bought by Chinese investors. That gives the Strand an important foothold in the country that is increasing its travel to the U.S. faster than any other nation, according to the U.S. Travel Association. Travel to the U.S. by mainland Chinese soared by 266.8 percent between 2008 to 2013 to 1.8 million inbound travelers, according to the association, and is expected to grow to 4.3 million inbound travelers by 2018.
The ground work The Strand s courting of Chinese tourists has a short history. It began in 2012 and was actually initiated by Chinese sports marketing company Olle Sports Group. Golf Holiday was asked late in 2011 by the U.S. Department of Commerce to provide promotional material for a trade show in Beijing and sent along golf planner magazines, DVDs and other information. A brochure about the Myrtle Beach World Amateur Handicap Championship intrigued Olle Sports executives, and they contacted Golf Holiday officials via emails that had to be translated from Mandarin to English. They were trying to understand what it was, how the event worked and how we worked, Golden said. Olle Sports became a sponsor of the 2012 World Am and was granted rights in China to use the World Am name to stage tournaments, market them and sell sponsorships. That was the icebreaker, Golden said. This will be the fourth consecutive year that a Chinese marketing company will stage a series of tournaments in at least eight cities across China under the World Am umbrella, host a Chinese World Am championship and send players and other guests to the five-day tournament on the Strand in late August. After their first trip here they were telling me this is paradise, Golden said. They love Myrtle Beach as a destination. More than 20 Chinese residents came to the Myrtle Beach World Am last year and about the same number are expected this year. A dozen Chinese players will participate in an annual affiliated U.S.-Sino Cup on the Strand that started last summer in China. Top World Am finishers comprise the 12-member U.S. team. No China resident had played in the World Am in its first 28 years through 2011. At that time we didn t have any kind of relationships in China, Golden said. [Olle Sports involvement] gave us a turnkey opportunity to not only promote Myrtle Beach and the World Am, but to start relationships there in China, to leverage the event to begin to develop relationships. Golden s first of two trips to China was for the 2013 Chinese World Am finals in Yantai, where he met with provincial tourism officials and representatives of World Am China events sponsor Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer 1844, Golf Digest China and Travel Channel China. That s when we first began to understand what the opportunity was, Golden said. Olle Sports has arranged and provided much of the exposure Myrtle Beach has received in China. It has promoted its World Am events with extensive campaigns involving television, newspapers, magazines and signage, and organized a series of media and marketing opportunities for Golden and Rhodes last March
when they attended the Golf Holiday-sponsored International Association of Golf Tour Operators Asian Convention at Mission Hills Golf Club in Haikou, China. Golden said that trip involved dozens of meetings with golf and vacation tour operators, media members and tourism officials in both Haikou and Beijing, and resulted in Myrtle Beach being featured on Travel Channel China, in magazine articles and on a digital billboard in Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport. We were able to accomplish that without having to spend media dollars in China, Golden said. Our goal was to begin to introduce the area and educate them about what Myrtle Beach was and what it was about. In two years we ve come a long way. The potential Dou s company isn t the only one in China working to send vacationers to Myrtle Beach. Former Olle Sports vice president Winsen Qian has broken from the company and created his own marketing firm DE Sports Development specializing in golf and travel, and has partnered with the GZL International Travel Service in Guangzhou with a possible focus on Myrtle Beach. For the past two years, GZL planned the U.S. itinerary for Chinese World Am players that included tours of cities including New York. Golden said the World Am contracts with Olle Sports have been transferred to Qian s new company, which will continue to stage the events in China, and Golden hopes to meet with GZL officials by the fall to set up a direct partnership. We want to partner with GZL and promote Myrtle Beach through them, Golden said. We re trying to set up a travel pipeline to Myrtle Beach and help them promote and sell Myrtle Beach there. Qian said the amount of travel to the U.S. through GZL could hinge on the relationship between the company and Myrtle Beach tourism officials. If there is any cooperative relationship between Myrtle Beach and GZL, they will bring a Travel to Myrtle Beach project into their travel products, Qian said. Dou said he is not yet sure how many Chinese visitors his company s three new departments will be sending to the Strand and the company s courses. We re still doing our marketing and connections right now, Dou said. We re trying to partner with the China Golf Association because we have some connections with them. Golden believes a key to further attracting Chinese tourists is impressing them on their initial visit. That involves discovering what Chinese travelers are looking for during a vacation and providing it to them. Those things may include transportation for the duration of the trip, translators and special amenities at hotels, including certain types of slippers and teas.
If we can get Chinese golfers and tourists, how can we accommodate them? Golden asked. What we ve found is by and large we have product here they are very satisfied with and happy with. Dou said he doesn t believe the lack of direct flights from China to Myrtle Beach will be an issue with travelers, who will likely have layovers in cities including New York and Atlanta. It s better direct, but Myrtle Beach cannot be direct, Dou said. They have to connect, but that s okay, that s not a problem. Chinese are the world s highest-spending travelers per capita, laying out $7,200 each per trip, although much of that is on air travel, according to U.S. Travel Association. Brand USA said in a China Tourism Market Update in mid-december that China s upper and middle classes spend 19 percent of their annual salaries on overseas travel, which is dramatically more than any other source country. The U.S. ranks No. 1 as the country most Chinese want to visit. Golden said some high-end West Coast golf destinations such as Pebble Beach and Bandon Dunes in Oregon have been tapped into the China tourism community for several years, and other markets including Michigan and Florida have increased marketing efforts in China in the past couple years. But Myrtle Beach beat most competing U.S. markets into the world s most populous country, and has possibly established the most productive relationships to go along with the existing associations of those who have invested here. We made a lot of inroads very quickly due to the ability to promote the World Amateur, Golden said. According to Brand USA, the process for Chinese residents to acquire tourist visas has become easier and streamlined. Interview wait times have decreased; a new online system allows Chinese to schedule visa appointments, pay processing fees and check on the status of visas online rather than in person; and in November the validity period of tourist visas was extended from one to 10 years. Brand USA says close to 90 percent of non-immigrant applications from Chinese nationals are approved. Certainly the opportunity exists [in China], Golden said. The travelers and golf enthusiasts are there. Visa restrictions have lightened. It s easier for them to acquire them, and it has made it easier for them to consider coming to Myrtle Beach. Contact ALAN BLONDIN at 626-0284 or on Twitter @alanblondin, or read his blog Green Reading atmyrtlebeachonline.com Contact STEVE JONES at 444-1765 or on Twitter @TSN_SteveJones.