Your first Pro group trip: everything you need to get started

Going away with your members is an opportunity to spend quality time away from the day-to-day club environment, strengthen relationships, add another dimension to your coaching and create an additional revenue stream for your business. Get the first trip right and it could even become a regular fixture in the club calendar.

But if you’ve never organised a trip before, knowing where to start can feel like the hardest part.

Where should you go? How many golfers do you need? When should you travel? How far ahead should you plan? What should you charge? And, perhaps most importantly, how much organising are you actually going to have to do?

The good news is that you don’t need to have all the answers. Golfbreaks has a dedicated Pro Travel team who understand the needs of PGA Professionals and their groups. From your first idea through to getting your trip off the ground, they’ll be there to offer advice, help with the arrangements and give you access to resources that make planning and promoting your trip easier.

A Pro trip can be a valuable addition to your business, but the benefits go well beyond the financial opportunity.

At the club, your time with members can often be limited to a lesson, a fitting, a quick conversation in the shop or a few holes on the course. A trip gives you the chance to spend several days together and build much stronger relationships.

That can have a lasting impact when you return home.

There are plenty of ways to make the trip your own, too. You might incorporate some coaching, arrange competitions across the week, host a prize-giving on the final evening or simply enjoy playing alongside your members.

For your golfers, it’s a chance to enjoy great courses and good company with their Pro at the centre of the experience. For you, it can help increase member engagement and loyalty while creating opportunities for coaching and additional earnings. Once you’ve successfully run one trip, the next one becomes much easier. Before long, your annual Pro trip could be something your members look forward to every year.

It’s tempting to begin by scrolling through resorts and golf courses, but for your first trip, start a little closer to home. Think about the members you’d like to take with you. You don’t necessarily need a huge group. The ideal group size will depend on the type of trip you want to create and the experience you want to give your members.

For a coaching break, for example, we recommend 7 to 11 amateurs per Pro. This keeps the group manageable and ensures everyone gets plenty of your time and attention, both on the practice ground and out on the course.

Start by thinking about your regular lesson clients, members you play with, golfers who enjoy travelling, or existing groups at the club who you know would relish the opportunity to spend a few days away with you.

You can even have a few informal conversations before you start planning:

“If I organised a golf trip for members next year, would you be interested?”

You’ll quickly get a feel for the level of interest, the sort of budget people are comfortable with and the type of experience they’re looking for. That information makes everything that follows much easier.

There’s no single formula for a successful Pro trip.

Some groups want plenty of golf, some want coaching alongside their rounds and others place just as much importance on the social side of the trip. Think about what would work for your members and, importantly, what feels natural for you as a Pro. You could build the trip around daily competitions, add coaching sessions before rounds, organise team formats or create a Ryder Cup-style event. Alternatively, you might keep things simple and focus on great golf, a relaxed atmosphere and plenty of time together away from the course.

You don't need to know exactly where you want to go before speaking to us. Tell our dedicated Pro Travel team what you have in mind, your approximate group size, budget, preferred dates and the type of experience you're looking for and they can help recommend options that work for you and your members.

One of the advantages of organising a Pro trip is the variety of options available throughout the year.

When and where you travel will depend on what you want from the trip, your members' availability and your budget. As a general guide, these are the key travel periods we recommend considering:

• UK short breaks: April to October
• European destinations: February to November
• Mid-haul destinations: all year round
• Long-haul destinations: all year round

That gives you plenty of flexibility to build a trip around your club calendar. A UK break during the warmer months can be an ideal introduction to travelling with your members, while heading overseas can extend the season and give your group the opportunity to enjoy warmer-weather golf when conditions at home may be less inviting.

For a first trip abroad, we'd recommend keeping things relatively simple. A three or four-night European break is often the ideal starting point, giving you enough time to create a memorable experience without being away from the golf club for too long.

Spain and Portugal are particularly well suited to first-time Pro groups. Short flight times, good air connectivity and resorts within easy reach of the airports can make the journey straightforward for you and your members, while keeping transfer times to a minimum.

We've also worked with a number of fantastic, tried-and-tested venues across both countries that are particularly well suited to Pro and coaching groups. Many combine excellent practice facilities, multiple golf courses on site or nearby, and high-quality four or five-star accommodation options.

Having everything in one place makes a real difference. You can spend less time worrying about logistics and moving your group around, and more time coaching, playing golf and enjoying the experience with your members.

For those looking further afield, mid and long-haul destinations open up opportunities throughout the year. These can work brilliantly as your trips develop and your members become more adventurous about where they'd like to travel.

Not sure what works best for your first trip? Our dedicated Pro Travel team knows which venues work particularly well for Pro groups and can recommend options based on your dates, budget, group size and the type of experience you want to create.

A Pro trip should deliver a brilliant experience for your members, but it can also make commercial sense for your business. Depending on how you structure the trip, there may be opportunities to build in your own margin, benefit from group arrangements or incorporate additional coaching into the experience.

The important thing is to think about this from the beginning rather than treating it as an afterthought. Ask yourself what your time is worth. You’re not simply joining a group holiday; you’re bringing the golfers together, hosting the experience and adding value throughout the trip.

Our Pro Travel team can help you understand the options available and structure the trip appropriately, so you can create something that works for your members while making it worthwhile for you. There are indirect commercial benefits too. Stronger member relationships can lead to more coaching, fittings and engagement when you return to the club. A successful trip can also provide the foundations for future trips, giving you another recurring element within your annual business plan.

One of the biggest concerns for a first-time trip organiser is often: what happens if I launch it and nobody books?

This is where giving yourself enough time and having a simple promotional plan makes a big difference.

Our booking data shows that Pro groups tend to start planning well ahead of travel. On average, the time between initial enquiry and travel is:

• UK trips: 6 months
• European trips: 8 months
• Mid-haul trips: 10 months
• Long-haul trips: 11 months

So, the further you're looking to travel, the earlier it's worth starting the conversation. You don't need to have a full group ready to book at this stage. Starting early simply gives you more time to work with our Pro Travel team to explore the right options, generate interest among your members and fill your places without feeling rushed.

You don’t need an elaborate marketing campaign either. Start by speaking directly to the members you think are most likely to be interested, then build awareness through the communication channels you already use.

That could include email, WhatsApp groups, your club newsletter, social media or a poster in the Pro Shop.

And don't feel you have to create everything yourself! Golfbreaks can provide promotional assets to help you get your trip in front of members, including email copy, WhatsApp messaging and poster templates. You can adapt these to your own voice and your club, giving you a simple way to start generating interest without staring at a blank page.

A straightforward promotional timeline can also help you know when to launch the trip, when to remind members and when to make a final push for any remaining places.

Our dedicated Pro Travel team specialises in helping PGA Professionals take their members away and can support you throughout the process. Once we understand what you're looking for, the team can help put together the right package and take care of the travel arrangements around it, including your accommodation, golf and the other elements required for your break.

Perhaps most importantly for your first trip, you'll have someone to turn to. Whether you're unsure about the right destination, need help structuring the break or have questions as the trip gets closer, you'll have the support of a team who understands Pro groups and what makes them different. That leaves you to concentrate on the part that only you can deliver: bringing your members together and creating a trip they'll want to talk about when they get home.

Once your places are filling up, you can start thinking about the finer details. A little planning can turn a good golf break into a memorable Pro trip.

That doesn’t mean filling every hour of the itinerary. In fact, giving members some downtime can be just as important. Instead, think about a handful of touches that make the trip feel like your own. A welcome drink on the first evening can bring everyone together, daily competitions can create some friendly rivalry, a short coaching session can add extra value without taking over the trip and a final-night dinner or prize-giving gives everyone a chance to celebrate the week.

Golfbreaks can also provide a trip planner and itinerary template to help you organise tee times, coaching sessions, competitions, dinners and other activities in one place.

Keep it simple. Your members are there to enjoy themselves, and so are you.

Your first trip doesn't have to start with a blank sheet of paper.

Alongside the support of our dedicated Pro Travel team, you'll have access to resources designed to make planning and promoting your trip easier, including:

• Email templates to help you launch and promote the trip to members
• WhatsApp copy for quick, informal communication with your group
• Poster templates to promote the trip around the club
• A promotional timeline to help you know what to communicate and when
• A trip planner to keep the important details in one place
• An itinerary template to help you structure the experience once you're away
• Dedicated support from the Golfbreaks Pro Travel team throughout the planning process

You can use as much or as little of this support as you need. The aim is simple: to remove the time-consuming parts of organising your first trip and give you the confidence to make it happen.

You don't need to have a destination selected, 20 members signed up and every detail mapped out before you contact Golfbreaks. In fact, you can start much earlier than that. If you have an idea of the members you'd like to take away, roughly when you'd like to travel and the sort of experience you want to create, that's enough to begin the conversation.

Our dedicated Pro Travel team can take it from there, helping you explore the options, understand how the trip could work commercially, put the right arrangements in place and provide the tools you need to promote it to your members.