The 20th edition of IAGTO’s annual golf tourism awards has taken place in Marrakech on the final day of the International Golf Travel Market – with Portugal’s Algarve scooping the top prize. To celebrate the occasion, IAGTO is revealing the top 15 golf destinations as voted for by its member golf tour operators and has announced just one overall Golf Destination of the Year, instead of one for each of five geographical regions.
The Algarve, a two-time European Golf Destination of the Year winner (2006 and 2014), picked up this prestigious accolade at the climax of the glitzy IAGTO Awards ceremony attended by well over 1,000 IGTM delegates.
IAGTO has over 700 golf tour operators in 63 countries and the top 15 golf destinations that they voted for were, in alphabetical order:
• Abu Dhabi
• Algarve (Portugal)
• Coastal South Carolina (USA)
• Costa del Sol (Spain)
• Cote d’Azur & Provence (France)
• Dominican Republic
• Fife (Scotland)
• Lisbon Golf Coast (Portugal)
• Marrakech (Morocco)
• Monterey County (USA)
• New Zealand
• South West Ireland (Ireland)
• Tenerife (Spain)
• Vietnam
• Western Cape/Garden Route (South Africa)
Cambodia was voted Undiscovered Golf Destination of the Year by the journalists of the International Golf Travel Writers Association. For the revamped golf resort categories, Sofitel Angkor Phokeethra Golf & Spa Resort, Moon Palace Cancun and Adare Manor picked up the Awards for Asia Pacific, The Americas and Europe, Africa & Middle East Golf Resort of the Year Awards respectively. In a nod to the future, IAGTO unveiled a new category of Experience Awards where one golf course and one hotel in each of twenty-five countries were recognised for the outstanding experience that they delivered this year for visiting golf travellers. Once again voted for by IAGTO golf tour operators selling those 25 destinations.
Awards presenter Peter Walton, IAGTO Chief Executive, said: “As the guardians of the most important and prestigious golf tourism awards, for two decades now we have presented only a handful of awards each year which lends enormous gravitas to the event and significance to the winners. With only one Golf Destination of the Year Award the expectation was palpable. But we also took the opportunity to expand the Awards to other categories of companies with our Golf Experience and Hotel Experience awards. We will extend these next year to yet more countries so that every major golf destination will be able to celebrate achievements within their golf tourism industry.”
