On Saturday I flew out of Edinburgh in a coat and a scarf.
On Sunday afternoon I landed in Tenerife…

The coat came off before I reached the car.

I live in the Canary Islands, and I still feel it every time. The airport doors open, the warm air hits you, and your shoulders drop a couple of centimetres.

I think that's a big part of what a winter golfer is buying.
Before the first tee and before the first dinner, there's that moment at the door.

It's also why I enjoy this job so much in November.

What's the first thing your golfers say when they land somewhere warm?

P.S. That's me on Sunday, about twenty minutes after landing. The coat is in the suitcase.

I recommend the golf courses that answer quickly.
Even when there's a more famous name nearby.

Nobody taught me that. It's what I'd want if the group were mine: someone on the other end who replies the same day.

The famous one can wait for the second trip.

Would you like resorts like that in your portfolio? Send me a message and I'll show you how easy they are to sell.

Casa de Campo means "country house" in Spanish.
It's a modest name for seven thousand acres…

The land around La Romana was sugar cane. It belonged to Central Romana, the sugar mill that still works in town today.

In the late 1960s the American group Gulf+Western bought the mill. Its chairman, Charles Bluhdorn, wanted a place by the sea to host his guests.

Pete Dye opened Teeth of the Dog in 1971. In 1974 the country house opened as a retreat for the company's executives and their guests.

It opened to the world later and kept the name.

Your clients still drive in past the cane fields, and play where those first guests played.

Do your clients like knowing the story of the place they're staying?

P.S. This story works especially well with incentive groups.

———
Casa de Campo®, simple to sell.

I'm Mónica Díaz Vecino, Director of Golf Sales at Casa de Campo® Resort & Villas. Always looking for tour operators and travel intermediaries who want to sell the resort.

Clients who ski usually choose between a ski week and a golf week.
It makes sense. Most places only give you one of the two…

In Granada, from late November, you can have both on the same day.

Sierra Nevada is the southernmost ski resort in Europe. The season usually opens at the end of November or in early December, depending on the snow.

About an hour and a half south by road, Los Moriscos sits next to the sea at Playa Granada, on the Costa Tropical.

Skis in the morning, lunch on the way down, and golf in the afternoon with the mountain you skied still in view.

In December there's light for nine holes. By March, for all eighteen.

Do you have clients who ski and play golf?

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Golf resorts, simple to sell.

I'm Mónica Díaz Vecino. I represent premium golf resorts in Europe and the Caribbean, and I'm always looking for tour operators and travel intermediaries who want to sell them. More than 3,000 golf travel agencies already do.

This month I saw a search in my website stats:
"best place in the Caribbean for a corporate golf retreat".

I'd have answered in three words. Casa de Campo®.

Three Pete Dye courses, rooms for the meeting, dinner at the marina, and nobody needs a bus to reach the first tee.

Would you like Casa de Campo® in your portfolio? Send me a message and I'll show you how easy it is to sell.

In December, Panamanians start talking about summer.
Which sounds odd when most golfers are packing for winter…

They call the dry season "verano". On the Pacific side it usually starts in mid-December and lasts until April.

The trade winds arrive, the afternoon rain stops, and the sky stays blue for weeks at a time.

Both courses I talk about most are on that side. Santa María in Panama City, and Buenaventura on the Pacific coast.

So while a golfer in Toronto or Madrid is getting the coat out, Panama is heading to the beach.

Which of your clients would like a second summer this year?

———
Golf resorts, simple to sell.

I'm Mónica Díaz Vecino. I represent premium golf resorts in Europe and the Caribbean, and I'm always looking for tour operators and travel intermediaries who want to sell them. More than 3,000 golf travel agencies already do.

When an agency sends me a request, their name stays with me.
The hotel and the golf course never see it…

It means a few more emails. I ask for everything in my own name, and I only make the introduction once the booking is confirmed.

I do it because I know what an agent is thinking when they send a client's dates to someone new.
Will this person go around me next time?

It's a fair thing to wonder. That client probably took years to win.

So the request comes to me, and the client stays theirs.

What do you need to know before you trust a new supplier with a client?

P.S. If there's a request you've been keeping to yourself for that reason, send it over. It stays between us.

I went to St Andrews to talk about the Caribbean.

It sounds a bit odd, I know.

But many of the tour operators at Elevate Golf have been sending golfers to Scotland and Ireland for years. And when January comes, those same golfers start asking about sun.

Thank you to everyone who sat down at table 30.

Would you like Casa de Campo® in your portfolio? Send me a message and I'll show you how easy it is to sell.

Golfers who spend a week on Lanzarote usually keep one day free.
It's a good idea. Two courses, seven days, and a whole island to see…

Some of them use that day to leave the island.

From Órzola, at the northern tip, a ferry crosses to La Graciosa in about twenty-five minutes.

Around seven hundred people live there. The streets are sand, there are hardly any cars, and in 2018 it was officially recognised as the eighth Canary Island.

You walk or hire a bike, have fish for lunch by the harbour in Caleta de Sebo, and take the boat back in the afternoon.

The next morning, back on the course.

Which of your golfers would enjoy a day without a single car?

———
Golf resorts, simple to sell.

I'm Mónica Díaz Vecino. I represent premium golf resorts in Europe and the Caribbean, and I'm always looking for tour operators and travel intermediaries who want to sell them. More than 3,000 golf travel agencies already do.

Next week I'll be at La Manga Club for the final of the Circuito Premium Mahou San Miguel.

Forty-five qualifying tournaments across Spain since March, and the winners all meet in Murcia from 19 to 22 November.

Casa de Campo® is one of the circuit's partners, so I'll be there for the prize-giving.

If you're at La Manga that weekend, come and say hello.

Would you like Casa de Campo® in your portfolio? Send me a message and I'll show you how easy it is to sell.

Clients who stay in Panama City usually ask for a room with a view of the skyline.
Understandable. It's quite a view…

Across the bay there's another city, three centuries older.

In 1671 the pirate Henry Morgan sacked the first Panama City. Two years later the Spanish rebuilt it on a small peninsula, with stone walls around it. That's Casco Viejo.

Churches, plazas, iron balconies. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997, and today one of the places people go for dinner, with rooftops looking back at the towers.

For a golf group the day fits together easily. A round at Santa María in the morning, a walk through the old town in the afternoon, and dinner facing the skyline from the other side.

Which of your clients would like to see both cities in one day?

———
Golf resorts, simple to sell.

I'm Mónica Díaz Vecino. I represent premium golf resorts in Europe and the Caribbean, and I'm always looking for tour operators and travel intermediaries who want to sell them. More than 3,000 golf travel agencies already do.

Most golfers who fly to the Dominican Republic go straight from the plane to the course.
Fair enough. That's what they came for…

But on the south coast, under two hours by road from Casa de Campo®, is the oldest European city in the Americas.

Santo Domingo was founded in 1498. Its Colonial City has the first cathedral of the Americas, begun in 1514, and the Alcázar de Colón, the palace of Columbus's son Diego. UNESCO made it a World Heritage Site in 1990.

It's an easy day between two rounds. Cobbled streets in the morning, lunch on a plaza, and back in La Romana for dinner.

Which of your clients would like a day in the Colonial City?

P.S. This one works especially well for groups travelling with partners who don't play.

———
Casa de Campo®, simple to sell.

I'm Mónica Díaz Vecino, Director of Golf Sales at Casa de Campo® Resort & Villas. Always looking for tour operators and travel intermediaries who want to sell the resort.

Forget my swing. Look at what's behind it.

That's the Madrid skyline. I took this shot at the Open de España Pro-Am.

Golf in the morning. A rest.
Then a great restaurant, or out for tapas.
Or a match at the Bernabéu or the Metropolitano.

Next morning, another course. Another dinner. Out again.

Tough life.

Would you like Madrid in your portfolio? Send me a message and I'll show you how easy it is to sell.

When an agent asks me about a place I don't know, I tell them I don't know it.
It has cost me a few quotes…

It would be easy to find a hotel, ask for rates and send something back the same afternoon.

But I don't think the agent is only asking me for a price.
They're asking whether I'd put my name next to it.

So I answer for the places I've walked, played and had dinner in.
For the rest, I say so.

Agents can get a PDF from anyone.
I'd like them to call me because when I say yes, it means I've been there.

Has an honest "I don't know" ever won you a client?

P.S. That's me on [campo de la foto]. I played it before I said a word about it.

Unsolicited opinion of the day:
the best moment of a golf trip is usually the one nobody planned…

It isn't in the itinerary.

It's the beer after the round, when someone is still talking about the putt on the 16th.
The lunch that was meant to be quick and went on until four.
The last dinner, when somebody asks: "same week next year?"

The agent built everything that made it possible. The flights, the tee times, the hotel, the transfers.
That's why nobody at that table is worried about anything.

And I think that's where most repeat trips are decided.

What was the moment on your last trip that nobody planned?

Golfers who come to La Romana usually know one date: 1971, the year Teeth of the Dog opened.
There's another 1971 in town that fewer of them have heard of…

That same year, Cuban cigar makers who had left the island opened Tabacalera de García in La Romana's free zone.

Today it's one of the largest premium cigar factories in the world. Around forty million cigars a year, all rolled by hand. Romeo y Julieta and Montecristo among them.

So La Romana gives a golfer two things to take home.
A round on Pete Dye's course by the sea, and a cigar rolled a few minutes down the road.

Casa de Campo® sits right between the two.

Which of your golfers would enjoy a cigar on the 19th hole?

———
Casa de Campo®, simple to sell.

I'm Mónica Díaz Vecino, Director of Golf Sales at Casa de Campo® Resort & Villas. Always looking for tour operators and travel intermediaries who want to sell the resort.

Golfers who go to Lanzarote usually come back talking about the volcanoes.
It's hard not to. They're everywhere you look…

What surprises a lot of them is the wine.

In La Geria, in the middle of the island, the vines grow in pits dug into the black volcanic ash. Each one sheltered by a half-moon stone wall.

The ash came from the Timanfaya eruptions of 1730 to 1736. It holds the night's moisture, so the vines live on almost no rain.

The local grape is Malvasía Volcánica. Fresh, with a slightly salty finish.

In 2025 the FAO recognised the island's farming system as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System.

Lanzarote Golf in the morning, a glass in La Geria in the afternoon.

Which of your clients would rather end the day at a winery than at the bar?

———
Golf resorts, simple to sell.

I'm Mónica Díaz Vecino. I represent premium golf resorts in Europe and the Caribbean, and I'm always looking for tour operators and travel intermediaries who want to sell them. More than 3,000 golf travel agencies already do.

Clients who think of Madrid at Christmas often ask me if it's worth it for golf.
It's a fair question. December isn't the month most people picture for a golf trip…

In Madrid the courses stay open all winter, and the days are usually clear and bright.

And in December the city adds something a golf week rarely has.

The Christmas market in the Plaza Mayor, one of the oldest in Europe, with more than a hundred stalls from late November to the 31st. The centre lit up at night. Roasted chestnuts on the corners. Turrón for the suitcase.

A round in the morning, a walk through the lights before dinner.

Which of your clients would like to do their Christmas shopping between two rounds?

———
Golf resorts, simple to sell.

I'm Mónica Díaz Vecino. I represent premium golf resorts in Europe and the Caribbean, and I'm always looking for tour operators and travel intermediaries who want to sell them. More than 3,000 golf travel agencies already do.

I know golfers who travel to play as many courses as they can in a week.
And golfers who play the same course every morning for a month…

The first ones want the list. Three courses in four days, a different clubhouse at every lunch. They come home with a pocket full of scorecards.

The second ones want a place. The same tee time, the same walk, the same table at lunch. They come home rested.

Both are great clients. They're just looking for very different weeks.

Which kind do you have more of?

P.S. Once a month I send agencies a short note with what's new at the resorts I represent. If you'd like it, send me a message.

———
Golf resorts, simple to sell.

I'm Mónica Díaz Vecino. I represent premium golf resorts in Europe and the Caribbean, and I'm always looking for tour operators and travel intermediaries who want to sell them. More than 3,000 golf travel agencies already do.

When an agent hears "seven thousand acres", some picture a group getting lost in it.
It's a fair thought. Big resorts can feel complicated…

At Casa de Campo®, the size works the other way. Everything the group needs is inside the gate: three Pete Dye courses, the marina, the beach, the restaurants and Altos de Chavón.

La Romana's airport is about ten minutes away. And the resort has its own groups department to coordinate the week.

So the group leader gets to enjoy the trip too.

Which of your groups would like a week where everything is close by?

P.S. Seven thousand acres is the number I repeat most. It's still the one people remember.

———
Casa de Campo®, simple to sell.

I'm Mónica Díaz Vecino, Director of Golf Sales at Casa de Campo® Resort & Villas. Always looking for tour operators and travel intermediaries who want to sell the resort.

Clients who book a golf week in Madrid often ask what else they can see.
It's a good question. A week is long, and not everyone plays every day…

Madrid makes it easy. Toledo is about half an hour away by high-speed train. Segovia, with its Roman aqueduct, about the same.

So a rest day doesn't have to be a day at the hotel. It can be Toledo in the morning and back in Madrid for dinner.

Three cities in one golf week, with the same hotel every night.

Which of your clients would add a day in Toledo?

P.S. Segovia's train station is a few kilometres out of town. Book a car for that day, it saves a lot of waiting.