(Pictured: The Highlands at Dove Mountain)
Attracting golfers is not the primary priority for the Arizona city’s tourism agency as it was prior to the recession, but it’s still a big part of what’s become a more diversified marketing approach. And area courses like The Highlands at Dove Mountain are helping to provide new attractions through improvement projects that provide more “pizzazz.”
Golf courses in Tucson, Ariz. still haven’t bounced back from the drubbing they received during the 2008 recession, KOLD News 13 of Tucson reported, but amid signs of renewed interest in the game, golf still remains a key component of how tourism in the area is promoted.
While attracting the golfer may not be the priority for the Visit Tucson tourism promotion agency as it once was, Director of Communications Dan Gibson told KOLD News 13 that it’s still a big part of what’s become a more diversified marketing scheme for the Tucson area.
“People are now looking to come here for Mexican food, or because they care about food culture,” Gibson said. And he also gets calls from people who want to know how to experience attractions in the area ranging from murals to mountain and street biking, hiking and training.
“I mean, there is so much now,” Gibson told KOLD News 13. But he also still gets “a couple calls a week from folks looking solely for a golf experience,” the station reported.
“We wouldn’t dream of trying to get away from golf for a very long time,” Gibson said. “[The area’s golf clubs] are great customers.” And even with ample competition for golf business from nearby locales such as Phoenix and Scottsdale in Arizona, and Palm Springs in California, Gibson confirmed that the thousands of people who are attracted to Tucson to play golf remain key to the city’s tourist-based economy, because they “spend a lot of money.”
Tucson-area clubs are also doing their part to keep the area competitive for tourists’ golf dollars, KOLD News 13 reported. At The Highlands at Dove Mountain in Marana, Ariz., a recent million-dollar-plus project rebuilt the golf course’s greens and bunkers while reworking the tee boxes and trimming vegetation.
“It looks like a brand new course that’s been sitting here for 20 years,” said Mark Oswald, the club’s General Manager.
Oswald has an advantage that many courses don’t have, which allowed The Highlands’ course-improvement project to be completed without incurring debt, KOLD News 13 reported. The property’s 2,300 HOA members’ contributions towards golf course maintenance and capital needs, paid whether they play golf or not, helped to fund the project.
“It [the course improvement} keeps their home values up,” Oswald said. “We had to convince them of that.”
But many of the owners at Dove Mountain have come from all over the country, like “Chicago, Minnesota and Seattle,” Oswald added, after being drawn to its golf offer, in addition to other factors.
“We’re still really trying to attract the golfer,” Oswald said, “[One of the project’s primary goals was to give the course] more eye appeal [and] put a little more pizzazz in it.”
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