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PRICE GUIDE, ST ANDREWS WEEKEND BREAK
Quite a lot of golf tour operators will take some low-season green fees, perhaps wrap them up with a budget hotel ‘offer’, and then present them as the dreaded “prices from”. Sure it makes for an eye-catching headline. Faraway Fairways could do the same. The question really though is does this help you at all? Probably not in most cases. Does it even help us? Well most golfers probably don’t appreciate having their hopes built up only for them to wade through the detail to discover that the price that caught their attention requires them to comply with all sorts of sub-optimal conditions, usually playing in the winter months, and using an accommodation that they’d perhaps rather not do.
In truth, very, very, few golfer’s actually buy package golf vacations off the shelf anyway. It’s far more common for golfers to have their requirements met by way of a bespoke proposal. For all practical purposes then, the price of Scottish golf vacations varies as people add or omit items. All that a majority of people seem to require is an honest, and broad ballpark figure which they can then use as their foundation to build from
Guide price based on four golfers sharing two ‘Fairway twin rooms’ (view of the course)
Transport costs based on self-drive and divided by all (chauffeur drive is perfectly viable)
Transport costs based on self-drive and divided by all (chauffeur drive is perfectly viable)
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Typical Price Range Guide – LUXURY PEAK SEASON …………………….,£1395
Highlights – St Andrews Old Course (ballot) otherwise, St Andrews Castle Course, St Andrews New Course & St Andrews Jubilee Course Duration – 4 days Travel class – Luxury – Old Course hotel or Fairmont Season – All year round Transport – Self drive although chauffeur drive probably works just as well in St Andrews. |
The St Andrews ‘shoulder season’ encompasses the last two weeks of April and the last two weeks of October
A typical golf programme has three major price components
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THE GOLF (Green fees)
ACCOMMODATION
TRANSPORT
The cost of green fees tends to be the same for everyone regardless of how we set things up. You might like to think of the golf as ‘static’ therefore. The same is true of transport as well. A fourball party will usually generate a luggage manifest of eight items (4 suitcases and 4 golf bags). This means we tend to use the same transport solution, a 9-seater (9 luggage items) MPV (multi-purpose vehicle) such as a Mercedes Vito. The variation in price tends to come form the accommodation therefore. We think of this as ‘dynamic’ rather than ‘static’.
Important – Dynamic prices do alter dependent on the choices we make, the season we book for, and in the case of hoteliers that operate revenue yield management models outside of fixed rate contracts, the time of year we process a booking. As a general guideline, the nearer we book to the day of arrival, the more expensive things become
NON-GOLFERS
Perhaps the most obvious question is does removing the price of the golf work as an estimate for the cost of a non-golfer? In broad terms, yes it does, it’s a fairly reliable guide but equally, it’s all about ratio’s again between static and dynamic components. The more expensive a hotel is (dynamic influence) the bigger the percentage contribution it makes to the overall cost.
Non-golfers can perhaps generate a few additional costs associated with visitor activities, but unless they’re indulging health spa treatments at some of the resort hotels, these are never comparable in price to a green fee.
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