The Week That Was, june 7, 2015

     In what it calls as “the Asia golf scoop of the year,” Golfasian reports that a pair of resorts in Indonesia are in line to become Trump International Golf Clubs. The resorts to be re-branded are Nirwana Bali Golf Club, on the southwestern coast of Bali, and Lido Golf Club, in West Java. In the June 2015 edition of its online newsletter, Asian Golf Travel Nation, Golfasian says that the Greg Norman-designed layout at Nirwana Bail will get “a complete makeover,” while Lido, which is currently in the midst of a major overhaul, will become the centerpiece of “one of Southeast Asia’s most luxurious golf resorts.” The resorts are scheduled to reopen under Trump’s management in 2018, according to Golfasian. Nirwana Bali and Lido are owned by entities controlled by Hary Tanoesoedibjo, one of Indonesia’s wealthiest people. He’s the CEO of MNC Investama, a holding company whose assets include MNC Group, Indonesia’s largest media conglomerate, and at least two banks. Forbes says he’s worth $1.15 billion, but, as we all know, billionaires aren’t as unique as they used to be. In fact, Forbes believes that 1,323 people on the planet are richer than Tanoesoedibjo, and one of them is Donald Trump, who has an estimated net worth of $4.1 billion. The Trump Organization won’t comment on Golfasian’s story.

     Speaking of wealth, every once in a while it’s important to remind billionaires that money can’t always buy everything. Last week, this point was made emphatically to Donald Trump, who lost yet another legal battle against the Scottish off-shore wind farm that he’s been fighting against ever since William Wallace originally proposed it in 1298. In the most recent court skirmish, Trump’s lawyers argued that the government’s decision to approve the wind farm was illegal, in part because of something that somebody said during what was described as “an amazing lunch” in a hospitality tent at a Scottish Open. Hard to believe, but it’s s true. As most everyone knows, Trump objects to the wind farm because he believes it’ll ruin the views at Trump International Golf Links Scotland, put a chill on the vacation business in Aberdeenshire, and ultimately destroy Scotland’s entire tourism industry. So if you think that he’s tilting at windmills purely out of self-interest, you’re completely wrong. He’s out to save Scotland. He’s trying to prevent a great nation from making a fatal mistake when nobody else is brave enough to do so.

     Xanterra Parks & Resorts has given up trying to complete the development plans for its golf resort in Williamsburg, Virginia. The Colorado-based parks concessionaire has decided to sell the Kingsmill Resort, a property it bought in 2010, reportedly for close to $24 million. Among other things, Kingsmill features a 422-room hotel, a conference center, a marina, three 18-hole golf courses (designed by Pete Dye, Arnold Palmer, and Curtis Strange), and a nine-hole, executive-length track. An asking price hasn’t been disclosed. Xanterra hasn’t said why it’s putting Kingsmill on the market, but the Virginia Gazette reports that the company has had a series of “disagreements” with “a dissident group of homeowners over control of the homeowners' association.”

     In the wake of a monumental natural-gas discovery, the state petroleum company in one of Africa’s poorest nations aims to build a new port city that will have at least one golf course. The city is to be called Palma, and it’ll be located along the Indian Ocean in the northern part of Mozambique, near a huge reserve of off-shore liquefied natural gas. As a result of the discovery, an energy-industry analyst believes that Mozambique “will probably become the next Qatar.” In addition to factories and office space, Palma has been master-planned to include houses, hotels, shopping areas, schools, hospitals, and parks. Its golf courses will cater primarily to the foreign, white-collar professionals who’ll be relocating to Palma, as Mozambique has virtually no indigenous golfers. Today the nation has just two golf courses, both nine-hole tracks, one in Maputo and one in Beira.

     The original version of the preceding post first appeared in the March 2015 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

     KPMG’s Golf Advisory Practice believes that Europe’s golf industry is experiencing “the start of a meaningful recovery,” but you wouldn’t know it based on data from the construction side of the business. In “Golf Participation in Europe 2015,” KPMG says that just one course -- literally, one -- has been added to the inventory since 2013, when it last issued a report on golf participation in Europe. For the record, KPMG counts 6,786 courses on the Continent, the largest number of them in England (1,849).