It´s now easier and faster to book tee times in Portugal
PTee Booking is now available as a free mobile app for both iOS and Android. This new web portal aims to bring to the world an in-depth knowledge of Portuguese golf courses while at the same time providing a tee times/real time online booking service.
This latest innovative portal from the GolfTattoo Group complements the editorial content and equipment sales it has provided on www.golftattoo.com/ for the past three years.
As with the GolfTattoo website, partnerships have been forged with the Portuguese Golf Federation and the PGA of Portugal, PTee Booking has a contract to use the already established online booking system - PortugalGolfBooking - from the Portuguese National Golf Industry Council (CNIG), as well as approval for European Union funding through the Portugal 2020 program.
The company, PTee Soluções Tecnológicas Lda. (the majority of which is owned by GolfTattoo together with a group of private investors who strongly believe in the project), was created specifically to develop this new information and golf course reservations platform using the services of Hi-Interactive, a Portuguese company specializing in information and communication technologies.
When accessing https://pteebooking.com/ or the Free Mobile App, the user will discover a bilingual platform (Portuguese and English), together with the details of 75 golf courses, 25 of which already offer the option of booking tee times in real time. In the short term it will be possible to book 36 courses using this option and in the medium term the aim is to have approximately 50 courses on a real time booking basis.
PTee booking has already been approved has part of Portugal 2020 program (using EU funds) for internationalisation of the project / © D.R.
There are other digital media that have short synopses of Portuguese golf courses, but PTee Booking goes one step further by employing specialized critics to travel to the courses and write a review on the quality of the services on offer. Our experts, some of which are PGA Portugal golf professionals, rate the courses on a scale from 0 to 5 and users are also encouraged to write their own assessments.
"A distinctive feature of PTee Booking, when compared to other existing products in the marketplace, is that it is part of a core business group under the prestigious umbrella of GolfTattoo - the industry leader in golf news and editorial content in Portugal. GolfTattoo has established media partnerships with the main Portuguese golf tournaments such as the Portugal Masters (European Tour), the Portugal Open @ Morgado Golf Resort (European and Challenge Tours) and the Azores Ladies Open (Ladies European Tour Access Series)which says a great deal about our credibility", said Pedro Castelo Branco, CEO of GolfTattoo and PTee Booking.
"Our journalistic activity has a solid reputation recognized for its quality, but also for its unbiased approach, and this is a major asset in our evaluation of Portuguese golf courses as we intend to provide a high degree of satisfaction for our visitors/users. Ideally, no user of PTee Booking will ever be disappointed with their round of golf in Portugal and they’ll continue to use the portal/app for their golf reservations. It’s vital to us that everyone values and relies on our reviews", added the entrepreneur, who has worked in the golf industry for many years, including as a course manager at both the Quinta da Marinha and Montado resorts.
PTee Booking is now well established on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin social networks, as well as on all the platforms of the GolfTattoo Group. It has also appeared in two major UK magazines - Today's Golfer and Golf World, and there are partnerships already in place with the monthly golf supplement of the printed edition of Público newspaper and the digital economy newspaper, ECO.
O PTee booking can be accessed through the web site or by free download of the app / © D.R.
Indeed, Pedro Castelo Branco intends to go even further and the Portugal 2020 program (using EU funds) has already approved an internationalisation project based on a two-year promotion plan that includes "a strong bet on digital marketing but also on the local knowledge of the target markets". To this end the marketing team at PTee Booking will attend a number of international golf tournaments such as the Spanish Open, the Nordea Masters (Scandinavia), the BMW International (Germany) and the British Masters (United Kingdom).
The internationalisation of PTee Booking is already being reinforced through affiliation agreements with Booking.com and Rentalcars.com, and is aimed at nine external markets: the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Finland and Spain.
"We intend to surpass the 45,000 registered users mark during 2019. There’s a new trend or, if you prefer, a new niche market - the tourist who prefers to book everything themselves; flights, accommodation, restaurants and tee times. We’re increasingly positioning ourselves in this segment. It’s now possible to book a complete golf trip online in less than 20 minutes using a smartphone", explains Pedro Castelo Branco, himself a regular golfer.
Golf is regarded as a strategic tourism product in Portugal – particularly by the Portuguese Tourism Board - and it has gradually been recovering following the 2008 economic crisis. Every year from 2011 to 2014, Portuguese golf courses have sold in excess of 1.5 million tee times (data from CNIG) and in 2016 they surpassed the 1.8 million mark (1,886,613). PTee booking aims to put itself at the forefront of this sporting and economic activity.
Every year Portugal wins numerous awards at international tourism forums and most recently at last month’s World Golf Awards when it was elected as the World’s & Europe’s Best Golf Destination.
