Gone are the days when we travel to far flung places to play golf. Today, more people are into fitness and the latest trend is to travel around the world to go cycling
While golf tourism has fallen dramatically all over the world in the recent year, cycling has boomed. Today's must haves are not sets of clubs but sets of wheels. Even figures say that more people will receive cycling-related presents this Christmas than golf-related stuff.
Sport England reckons there were more than two million adults cycling at least once a week between April 2013 and April 2014, compared to 710,400 taking to the fairways.
According to an article at BBC, more worryingly for golf in England, participation has fallen by about 180,000 in eight years. Cycling, on the other hand, gained about 270,000 pedal-pushers in the last year alone. This figure does not include people tootling to work or down to the local. Cycling waxes while golf wanes.
A 2013 study by Sports Marketing Surveys, which has been examining golfers' habits for 17 years, showed that 20% of golfers who packed up the game in the past six to 24 months - whose reason was to take up a new activity or sport - did so to take up cycling.
Butterfield & Robinson CEO Norman Howe says the idea of biking tours for the luxury segment is surprising to some people, but the trend toward wellness over the last two decades has spurred demand for active luxury travel for small groups and customized independent consumers. Biking and walking also inject affluent visitors more directly into communities in new and unsuspected ways. Butterfield & Robinson is a high-end tour operator specializing in "slow" biking and walking itineraries with upscale dining and accommodations.
Golf doesn't need to start panicking yet. Just under 3.36 million Britons played at least one round of golf on a full-size course last year, according to Sports Marketing Surveys. This is more than 600,000 down from 2003, but it is still a number that most sports in Britain can only dream of.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
