With the Open Championship returning to Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland in July, the golf world’s attention will once again fall on a region still experiencing a post-COVID boom of visiting golfers. At the recent PGA Show in Orlando, Florida, a number of courses, tour operators, and accommodation providers in Northwest and Northern Ireland spoke about the growing amount of traveling golfers headed that way, not least because of the upcoming major.
“The location (of The Open) is a massive help to us, and it really gives the whole Northwest a showcase,” said John Farren, general manager of Ballyliffin Golf Club in Co. Donegal, the most northerly course in Ireland. “All the good news is in the Northwest now, and long may it continue.”
Farren doesn’t believe that expectation levels or demands from traveling golfers have changed in recent years, except for one factor. “They are probably traveling over more often now because they value their free time differently after it was lost for so long.”
As managing director of The Ebrington Hotel in Derry, Northern Ireland, Cecil Doherty oversees an 89-room hotel that opened in June 2023. “I’ve been involved in the golf marketing industry for 30 years now, including my previous experience as manager of Ballyliffin,” he says. “For me, we started the ball rolling there trying to poke a hole in the international golf market. Now, 30 years later, I see a tremendous growth curve coming into the Northwest. Particularly pleasing is the quality of the courses now. The product is much better.”
Doherty is seeing bookings for 2025 and 2026 at The Ebrington on a high growth curve, specifically for golfers. “People like to base themselves somewhere for a week, unpack, and do day excursions out to play golf,” he says. “That is what we’re designed to do. We’re 45 minutes to Portrush, Portstewart, and Castlerock; 35 minutes to Ballyliffin; and an hour to St. Patrick’s (Rosapenna Golf Resort) or Portsalon.”
“Derry is an obvious hub for trips to the North Coast,” added Farren. “A lively city with nightlife, good restaurants, and good hotels. It’s coming to the fore in that regard.”
According to Doherty, accessibility is another element drawing more golfers than ever before to the region. “This year, tee times in July are difficult because of the Open, but after that there is availability on courses in the Northwest,” he says. “You find that the bigger name courses in the South are at capacity in terms of volume, and they are all doing well.”
“Golfers are coming for seven nights with six rounds usually,” says John McLaughlin, CEO, North & West Coast Links, a tour operator based in Galway. “People ask for 36-hole days, but if you’re doing that you can’t really enjoy the 19th hole at all, and Ireland is all about that, too. The hospitality, the music, a few pints maybe. That’s a big part of a trip.”
Gerry Maguire, chairman of Carne Golf Links in Belmullet, County Mayo, says his facility is still experiencing a post-COVID boom. “This year we are 10 percent up on last year’s bookings at this time, and bear in mind that Carne was a bit of an unusual animal,” he says. “We were so far down the list in terms of bookings that we were only doing 2,500 rounds as recently as 2018. Last year we had 13,500 rounds.”
Even though Carne is 200 miles southwest of Royal Portrush, the impact of The Open in 2019 was still strong, according to Maguire. “We felt it hugely in 2019. We got a lot of visitors we didn’t usually get, particularly from Asia and Australia. This year we just got a booking of 44 Australians coming through for The Open.”
For all the improvements in accommodations, food and beverage operations, and course conditioning, the region’s growth in golf remains fueled by something else. “The hospitality stands out in Ireland,” says Maguire. “You might play your game of golf and have a meal at the course, then go into town and see some of the same people in the local pub that night, especially in Belmullet where we are located.”
At Ardglass Golf Club in Northern Ireland, members have given up their tee times the week of the Open to accommodate visitors. “It’s good for caddies, the shop, the bar and the restaurant,” says general manager Paul Vaughan. “The Open is just so big that the whole country feels it. Seeing what happened in 2019 opened our eyes to that.”
But courses cannot live alone on the attention brought by the Open. “You can’t take the green fees and not back it up though,” said Vaughan. “We can’t lose sight of the experience. You want to create a home-away-from-home for golfers each day.”
“The demand for Irish golf is really strong,” says Alison Metcalfe, executive vice president Tourism Ireland North America. “We are in a really good place. And it’s easy to get to. This year we will have direct services from 22 gateways across the U.S., including new ones in Detroit, Nashville, and Indianapolis. We are looking forward to a bumper year for Irish golf.”