Golf Inc. Monthly - January/February 2016

Vietnam’s visions of glory

The late Bob Hope was known for carrying a golf club when entertaining troops during the Vietnam War. He was one of the few who did so.

Today’s a different story. Vietnam is a hot spot for golf development. In 1975, when the Vietnam War ended, the socialist republic had just two golf properties. By the mid 2000s, it had a dozen or so. Now it has 40, along with government approval to increase the number to 96 by 2020 – more than enough to bolster the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail.

“They’re determined to get on the world
stage,” said Brit Stenson, director of design
at IMG Golf. “The developers there are
being very aggressive.”
What’s more, Vietnam’s developers
are building high-profile complexes and
awarding design commissions to brand-
name architects. Greg Norman, Nick
Faldo, Colin Montgomerie, Gary Player,
Ernie Els and Nicklaus Design are working
in the nation, and many other designers
are knocking on the door.

Vietnam’s emergence on the interna-
tional golf scene has also captured the
attention of travel groups. One of them
recently named Norman’s course at The
Bluffs Ho Tram Strip the world’s best new
course, and the International Association
of Golf Tour Operators named Vietnam its
2016 Golf Destination of the Year for Asia

& Australasia.

Such notices haven’t yet made Vietnam a thriving golf destination — the nation reportedly attracted just 7,000 golf travelers last year — but observers believe its day will come.

“Most of Vietnam’s golf tourists are
currently coming only from neighboring
Asian countries — South Korea, Japan,
Singapore and Malaysia,” said Mark Siegel,
managing director of Golfasian, the leading
tour operator in Asia. “But interest is defi-
nitely increasing from golfers in Australia,
Europe and the United States.”
In fact, when it comes to golf tour-
ism, Siegel believes Vietnam is “the next
Thailand,” a nation that welcomes 750,000
golf vacationers annually.

“Vietnam’s golf tourism still has a long
way to grow,” he said. “I think it can max
out at around 300,000 annually. It’s truly
one of the up-and-coming golf destina-
tions in the world.”
Moreover, Siegel thinks Vietnam will
meet, or even exceed, its golf development
goal. If he’s right, the boom isn’t about to
go bust anytime soon, because Vietnam is
going to open more than 50 new courses
during the next five years.

Such a pace makes for some scary math, however. Let’s assume that the 7,000 vacationing golfers and Vietnam’s estimated

10,000 resident golfers each play five
rounds this year. That’s 85,000 rounds
across 40 properties. Even if we gener-
ously double the play, that’s still only 4,250
rounds per existing property. Five years
from now, if Vietnam really has close to
100 golf courses, the world’s tour operators
will have a lot of tee times to fill.

“My guess is that Vietnam will overbuild
quickly,” said Stenson, who’s been working
in Vietnam since the late 1990s. “It’ll prob-
ably end up like Thailand or Indonesia,
which had construction booms that even-
tually fizzled out. Of course, if Vietnam
builds too many courses, we won’t know it
for a while.”
The nation has just 10,000 resident golf-
ers — fewer than you’ll find in Sun City,
Ariz. More locals will surely take up the
sport, but when? Years ago, the Vietnam
Golf Association expected to have a golf
population of 50,000 by 2018. Good luck
with that prediction, especially if you’re
selling rounds for $100 or more in a nation
where the annual per-capita income barely
exceeds $2,000.

Inevitably, then, the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail leads to international travelers and to a question that nobody can definitively answer: How many courses does Vietnam really need to accommodate them?

Today, the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail extends for more than 1,100 miles, from Hanoi, in the inland north, to Ho Chí Minh City, along the coastal south. To put this distance in context: If you laid Vietnam atop the U.S. Midwest, it would stretch