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Private Club Radio Show
384: 4 Tips For The Ultimate Tennis Getaway w/ Scott Colebourne Tennis Resorts Online
Ready to elevate your club’s next tennis retreat to the next level? Expert Scott Colebourne from Tennis Resorts Online joins us to share his wealth of knowledge on crafting the ultimate tennis getaway for your members. With over 25,000 user reviews backing his expertise, Scott provides practical, actionable advice on selecting top-rated tennis resorts and tailoring experiences to fit the unique needs of your club. Discover his four essential tips that can help you curate an unforgettable tennis vacation that will leave your members raving.
We’re diving deep into the essentials of customizing on-court experiences, from coordinating with resort staff to ensuring your group's skill levels are matched perfectly. Learn the secrets to effective planning and communication that can transform a good trip into a phenomenal one. Plus, Scott highlights the perks of direct resort communication for better rates and personalized arrangements, alongside the option of private home stays to enhance your club's getaway experience.
This episode is filled with expert insight to ensure your next tennis retreat is nothing short of spectacular for your members!
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Hey everybody, welcome to the Private Club Radio Show Podcast, the industry source for news, trends, updates and conversations all in the world of private golf and country clubs. I'm your host, denny Corby, appreciate you all being here, whether you are a consummate professional or brand new to the industry. Welcome, welcome, welcome, we are glad you're here. This is going to be a very fun episode. I chat with my new friend, scott Colborne, and it's all about tips on planning an amazing getaway for your club, for your members, for finding the right tennis resort. Just four tips. It's going to be really good. I'm excited because I didn't realize this. You know, planning a trip can go wrong very easily. So we're going to do, we're going to find out how to make sure you have the best event, the best trip for your members possible. If you have not done so already, sign up for our newsletter, because we don't release all of our content here on the channel. Head on over to privateclubradiocom and the notification pops up. So you just sign up there or you can do privateclubradiocom slash newsletter. If you or your club is looking for one of the most fun member event nights you can ever have, look no further. We have the Denny Corby experience. That's me. Magic, mind reading, comedy, crowd work. It's a full-blown experience, from the moment people show up with close-up sleight-of-hand magic to the after-dinner show. It is so much fun. I am a little bit biased. If you do want to learn more, head on over to dennycorbycom. That's dennycorbycom, but now Private Club Radio listeners.
Speaker 1:Let's get to the episode. Let's welcome our friend Scott Colburn. What's up, scott? Hey Danny, how are you doing? I'm doing well, thanks. How are you? Great, great, thank you. All right, so I am glad you are here. A golf expert, or golf, oh my God, so sorry. A tennis expert, but not just anything with tennis, but tennis resorts all over the world or just in the States.
Speaker 2:That's correct. So I'm originally from New Zealand, danny and I moved to the USA in 2004. And I loved tennis and I loved America growing up, so I moved to the USA, started coaching tennis and then I found myself working at tennis resorts and I was around the hospitality industry and, as yourself and many of the listeners will know, resorts and I was around the hospitality industry and, as yourself and many of the listeners will know, resorts and clubs go hand in hand, and so I was working in the private club at the resort environment, and then I transitioned to working for a company called Tennis Resorts Online, and so we specialize in promoting tennis resorts all around the world, primarily the USA. Our website has over 500 resorts listed on it, so that's the world I've known for the past 15 years is tennis programs at resorts.
Speaker 1:And, just like this show that we have here, super niche-y and I love that, because members at clubs, they want the best of the best so for you to be able to or I shouldn't even say best of the best, but they want what's best for them and you, with Tennis Resorts Online, can help people find their dream getaways or these experiences, that's the goal.
Speaker 2:We are the guide to taking your racket on the road, and so our users come to the website to find the best tennis resort for them. We have over 25,000 reviews of tennis resorts left on our website. 25,000? 25,000 reviews. We publish the annual that is a lot. We publish the annual top 100 rankings of resort programs, resort camps, and these are all reviews left directly on our website. These are not reviews that were scraped from Google or TripAdvisor or Yelp. They're all left directly on the website by guests and members that have gone to tennis resorts.
Speaker 1:So you know a little bit about this stuff.
Speaker 2:A little bit. Yeah, I mean, I rely on our readers a lot for their reviews. Our top 100 rankings are published based on the, the user feedback. Uh, and then I think that, combined with my experience working in tennis resorts and helping organize tennis trips for private club directors and private club rackets directors, I've had a little bit of experience yeah, this is so, so amazing, uh, because I'm just looking at the site now as we're talking to like there's just so much cool stuff.
Speaker 1:So, and today, you, though, are going to, are going to help us. You're going to tell us because, when we were chatting before, I was like you know, you know all of the, you have the data, you've seen and heard everything. What are some tips for you know people when they're planning these getaways, these retreats, whatever you would like to call them, so you came up with four tips for planning an amazing getaway for your club, for your members, to have the most amazing experience possible.
Speaker 2:That's right. One thing we see a lot is we see directors of tennis or director of rackets at private clubs being asked by the members at the club where do I go on vacation, where do I go on vacation, where do I go on tennis resort, where do I go for a tennis camp? And I really think it can be a great activity for the director, and when I say director I mean tennis director or rackets director. I'll use them interchangeably, but for that director I think it helps to guide the team and give them these tips, and these tips can then help the players and the director plan that great vacation. Whether or not a tennis director wants to go on the vacation with the club group or not is a different story. There's pros and cons to that as well, but overall I think they can.
Speaker 1:It's a whole different episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a whole different episode, but I think by following these four tips, everybody can come out with a great experience and the tennis director can feel really good about sending their group away to whatever resort they may end up choosing.
Speaker 1:All right, what is number one?
Speaker 2:So the first one is choosing the right destination. So that involves a little bit of research. It could be geography we're in the country you might be located, you know. Does the group want to drive? Does the group want to fly the time of the year? So there's a lot of different ways to research where to go. You might have some members that have been to a specific tennis location before. Of course we'd recommend to go to tennis resorts online to search by destination, search by type. There is no fee for our customers to use the website or guests to use the website, and we do a very comprehensive listing that can be broken out in a number of different categories camps, resorts, location If they're a Forbes travel guide. Five-star resort, four-star resort if they're ranked in our top 100 resorts. So I think choosing the right destination is really the first important step.
Speaker 1:And these are real reviews on here, like there's, like I'm just looking to, like it's not, like there's it's not all five star. You know, sometimes you look on things like they have like all you're like, okay, there's got to be a little bit of not unhappy people, but like you know the real numbers. So this is good to see like real data yeah, that is real data.
Speaker 2:You can sort out reviews by the number of reviews, by the highest rating reviews. You know it does. All the reviews that come in are checked by our team, and so we do see the good, the bad and the ugly, and I think it really helps to read the genuine reviews. Most of them are not just a five-star great job review. They include detailed information about the pool, the hotel, the tennis instruction. So the reviews have a lot of detail and they can really help to tell a good picture about what the experience will be like when people are at the resort.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, to tell a good picture about what the experience will be like when people are at the resort. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what are some? Uh, is there a right way to research? Like I know that's like a dumb question, but like, is there a proper way to research and how to like, how to figure out which one is the best for, for?
Speaker 2:sure. So I think that, yeah, the first two steps kind of go hand in hand research and location and then then working with someone at your club Ideally it's a captain of a group or maybe it's the leader of a group of friends that want to travel. You know when this group of members of your club wants to go away. And there's two types of trips you can plan. One is you're in charge of the whole trip and you say we're going away on this weekend to such and such location and you're handling all of it. The other way is if a group or a team comes to you and says, hey, we want to go somewhere, what do you think? So those are kind of two different types of trips, um, but in either trip you want to have someone that you're delegating a lot of the um, the research and the work too, and that person's not a staff member. That person's a club member. They're a player on the team, the type of person that organizes the parties at the member's house afterwards after the match. They're really a fun person and they can help you research it.
Speaker 2:I would start with what general area you want to go. I want to go to South Carolina or I want to go to Texas, I want to go to Florida, and then the time of the year, and that'll get you to a list of about five maybe really highly ranked resorts in the right area in the right time of year and from there you can have that person make a phone call to each of the resorts and try and connect with someone there, and that kind of leads into the next step, which is which is working with the resort to plan your trip. So one of the challenges you get at a resort often is you call up and you get the reservations department and they'll do an amazing job of taking a lodging reservation for you, but they may not know that much about the tennis experience. So then you're going to get connected to the tennis department and they may not know much about the lodging experience.
Speaker 1:So ideally you want to connect with a resort where they can handle everything for you with one phone call or one person I can see, yep, yeah, like just making sure it's close by just handling all those little minute details that you don't, that, that you don't worry about until you need them, and then like, then it happens and you're like, oh, we should have thought this out more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's super important that you know like, maybe the checkout is a hard 10 o'clock and you've planned a tennis program on Sunday morning until 12 o'clock and you've got to leave your room and you've got nowhere to shower afterwards, and so if you're in connection with someone at the resort, whether it's in the lodging department or the tennis department, they can help with those little details and one or two quick phone calls or emails will give you a really good indication. Hey, are these folks going to be easy to work with? Are they going to help us have a great trip or are we just another customer here? And I would say you know all of the resorts in our top 25 and our top 50 rankings have all committed to being great tennis resorts and having a great customer experience. And those are the types of locations that will work with the lodging department to ensure you get a late checkout or an early check-in, or they'll be aware that you're there for the tennis and that's the focus and they want to make certain considerations around that.
Speaker 1:So it's like the people who work there have been trained, because this is not their first rodeo. So it's like, even if someone new comes in, it's like hey, this is, this is who these people are, this is what they want, this is what we're selling pretty much.
Speaker 2:Exactly that's it. You know you want to feel like. You know an inconvenience on the resort. You know the resorts are very good at handling certain types of customers. You know business travelers on conferences. They're very used to handling families. Are they used to a tennis group? And they may not have a tennis group every weekend, but there's definitely locations that are accommodating for that and they know what you're looking for and they're really helpful in planning a great tennis vacation.
Speaker 1:Well, and when a lot of these members go away, that tends to be the experience that they have is they usually have all those details planned out. So, of course, if they were to do something through the club or you know club style related or with people you know they would, you would assume that those little things would be handled and taken care of. So it just goes along with the continued experience that's 100, correct.
Speaker 2:I mean, members have expectations, and rightly so, and those expectations, you know, should be there when they travel as well, and so they want to go to a place where their expectations have been exceeded, and a lot of hospitality companies thrive on exceeding expectations, vacation purely online and then think it's going to be perfect. You've got to be able to connect with someone, whether it's a tennis director at the resort, whether it's someone in lodge who can help you, so they can understand exactly what you're looking for and they can help you have that great vacation.
Speaker 1:And you know I could be totally wrong, but I mean so and to me in my thought process, it would be the difference of being able to call up and go hey, I know my whole group, I know Bill gets up at 8 am, I know Tim is always up at 5. So, hey, can we get a court super early. Can we then reserve one later, because I know Frank always shows up late. So is it that sort of stuff, like being able to say like, hey, here's how the group tends to be, um, can we work around this and have like, since these two are up early, is there anything early here? They're a little bit later Like is that sort of along the same lines, like that's sort of. You know about customizing the experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%, Dan. That really leads us well into our third point of ensuring you have a great tennis experience. It's almost like it's the second set of the match, making sure you have a great on-court experience.
Speaker 1:So, but like? Is that the sort of thing that we're talking about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. So there's two parts to the on-court tennis experience. One is you know, are we going to be having instruction? What level of instruction is that? You know, are we a group of four going away and we just want to play, you know, do a lesson with a tennis pro for one hour? Or do we want to do a lesson with the tennis pro for nine hours and then we want to play some time in the afternoon? Or is it a group of 48 coming from the club and now the instructor at the club needs to make sure that they have 12 tennis pros available for a group of 48? Or is it, you know, a group? You look a little bit shocked there, danny. 48 is a lot for a tennis group.
Speaker 1:No, no, I, I was just like what's the average size, because we were just talking about four and all of a sudden you're like 48. I was like what a jump, like so what's. So I was gonna say like real quick, like what's the what is the average size? Is there? If there is?
Speaker 2:sure I'd say the average size is, uh, 8 to 12. So 8 to 12 is a group as a team usually, or a group of friends, and you know it generally happens in multiples of four because there's four players in a doubles game. Traditionally you get four players on a court for instruction, you know. But there are groups that travel as a club. They might give you know 48, 96, you know. But there are groups that travel as a club. They might give you know 48, 96, you know a bit large groups and so obviously a lot of planning goes into those large groups and you want to make sure you can't take a group of 48 if there's only four courts of the resort. That's just, you know, not going to work out.
Speaker 2:So all these kinds of things are planned in advance and I'd say the one piece that gets overlooked a little bit, but it's very important, is discussing in advance with the tennis instruction staff what you're looking to do. If you just give them a little bit of a tip ahead of time, hey, we are an intermediate team and we really want to work on double strategy, then the tennis pro can turn up day one. They've got a plan for double strategy you can turn up with no plan and most likely the instruction staff will have a plan for double strategy. You can turn up with no plan and most likely the instruction staff will have a plan for you, but it's much better if you communicate your plan advance. Hey, we all want to play with the same partner. We never want to switch partners while we're there because this is my partner forever. Okay, that's so helpful for the tennis instruction staff to know so they can really customize it.
Speaker 2:When I was part of the tennis instruction staff one of the funnest groups of the year that come away every year it was a group of gentlemen from a country club and the most important criteria was that they had large coolers close by the courts that they could fill with their drinks, sports drinks, adult beverages they just want to make sure the large coolers with ice and it was a really fun group. The instruction level was, uh, you know, really high. Their playing ability some were high, some were low. They we organized a tournament for the afternoon but because there was a communication advance, we were able to make it a great trip for them and in return they had a great time uh, I love hearing stuff like that.
Speaker 1:That's so cool, but no, it's so true. It's so true In an age where everything is so digital and type things down. Just pick up the phone, have a conversation and I'm assuming you probably end up paying like a slight premium, but probably nothing in totally different compared to if you were to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what you'll find is that often you'll get the same rate online or maybe even a better rate, because typically hotels like to sell rooms on a per night basis.
Speaker 2:So that may sound like oh, of course, scott, they want to sell per night, but nobody wants to do the math ahead of time on what's going to cost per person per day for the tennis in the room and all these different factors.
Speaker 2:But by the, you at the club or the person helping you organize the trip, is going to have to work that all out and split the check between the eight people going before they even go. And so, if you can have someone at the resort help you with that, because the resort really wants to sell you a king room or a queen room plus plus so plus sales tax tax, plus local lodging tax um, they don't want to divide it up for you, they don't want to make it simple. But you might say well, look, we're friends, we want to stay in a condo, we want to stay in a villa, okay, so that's when having someone that can help you over email or phone is going to really make it a much better experience than I would. Just, I wouldn't recommend not going to expedia and just trying to book it there, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:Or hotels, or yeah, yeah, well, I mean, and and I don't know if this is like a thing either, but like, oh, because it's a certain time of year, they know the whoever family who's, you know everyone's old and retired and they, you know, only live there a month out of the thing, so it's open for rent maybe. Or you know they they're, they open their home, their home, to groups who come out for that sort of stuff. I don't know, is that a thing either, or not?
Speaker 2:Definitely staying in private homes on the properties are a thing, whether it's booking through the resorts. A lot of resorts have private homes availability, or villas or condos, or some locations connect through Vecasa. Some are Wyndham condos, so there's all different options. It's definitely insider knowledge helps in advance for everybody. You know the staff wants you to have a great time um, so if you can connect with them in advance, they'll they'll help you have a great time yeah, no, that's that's so cool.
Speaker 1:Our fourth and final tip drum roll, please, no edit. Which is? Which is what is the final tip?
Speaker 2:So our fourth and final tip, denny, is making sure that you have allowed enough time or you've planned in advance for the off-court activities. So, depending on what the resort is or where it might be maybe it's Las Vegas, maybe it's New Orleans, maybe it's in Miami you want to make sure, or at least consider ahead of time, what you're going to be doing when you're not playing tennis. You want to make sure, or at least consider ahead of time, what you're going to be doing when you're not playing tennis. There's definitely locations that all they do is play tennis and they're in a sleepy town and there's not too much to do at night. And if you want that experience, then help your members have that experience. But if your members want to have a night out afterwards, make sure you're going to a resort location that allows them to have a night out.
Speaker 1:Or maybe they want to play golf in the afternoon, or maybe they want a beach experience or a spa experience, and so, again, plan planning all that in advance is super helpful. Yeah, no, that's totally true, because even if they had a great time playing tennis but the research wasn't done and they're in like a sleepy town where they really wanted more of like a nightlife, they're still going to be fine, but like the overall experience they're going to like it's going to feel a little like meh, even though it was probably great, it's like oh, it could have been better, whereas if they just did that little bit of research and just you know, maybe it's not like a Vegas, maybe it's like a, you know, new Orleans. Parts of it is pretty, pretty, pretty low key, but it's like a you know more like lower key town but still has like a fun scene to it. That would have been a better, a better time. How is there a way?
Speaker 1:Or like this is I don't know if this sounds dumb, but like is there to balance, kind of like fun, play and relaxation? Like is there a formula for that? Or anything you know, like is there too much fun? Is there too little fun? Is there like the right amount of fun that you've seen people go like hey, we've done this Dumb formula maybe Sure.
Speaker 2:There's definitely too much fun and not enough fun, and I've seen the negative sides of both too much fun and not enough fun. I would say that if you've got a fun group or a group that's traveling, you think it's going to be fun, and by fun I mean maybe they want to go out, maybe they want to have a laugh off the court a lot more. Not that that's if you don't do that, it's not fun. But Maybe they want to have a laugh off the court a lot more. Not that that's if you don't do that, it's not fun. But I would say early in the trip. So if you arrive on a Thursday, you know the group should try and plan, do something Thursday night and Friday night, because as they get late in the trip they're going to get more tired and play more tennis and be more worn out.
Speaker 2:But early on often the first night away is always exciting. People have a great time. So the first night. And then I would say don't play tennis the entire time. So plan the mornings, maybe even three hours in the morning each day, but give yourself the afternoon to relax. If people want to play more tennis, they can always play more tennis, or maybe they just want to go and play some match with the other afternoon. But you can have too much tennis and I think it's very important to help set the expectations for the group ahead of time. If you've got one of the group members that thinks it's going to be a yoga retreat and it's actually a tennis vacation, they're not going to have a good time, and I've seen that as well. You've got 39 visitors looking for a tennis vacation, one looking for a yoga retreat, and that one person is not happy, and that's not a good situation for 40 people they just bring down the vibe the entire time.
Speaker 1:That can happen. I've seen like that one, especially if it is like a smaller group, let's just even say like 10, 12, 15, 20 that one person who's just like awkward the whole time because they're just grumpy, because it's there's not what they want and they just can't lean into it. But no, yeah it. You know what one person can kind of yeah and I would say denny.
Speaker 2:That's why, whereas as a club professional you want to help organize a lot of the group experience, but not all that, you want to have a buffer or a barrier. So you know you don't want to be the one inviting certain members of the club to go on the trip, you want to either put the trip out for everybody at the club to sign up for or if a member comes who says, hey, can you help with our tennis vacation, so sure, I'll give you some tips. I'll help you find the location. I'll help you find the person at location to talk to, but you handle the reservation. Do you handle inviting who's going to come along? You know it's going to your friends or your team. You know, as the club staff you do not want to be involved in making decisions about who gets to go, who doesn't get to go, because that's a a sure way to get fired politics no, we've all seen that in the club industry.
Speaker 1:I know, scott. Where can people learn more if they don't know already?
Speaker 2:thanks, denny. So we're at tennis resorts onlinecomcom tennisresortsonline on all the social media profiles. It's by far the best place to connect with us. We have a newsletter, we have the TRO Travel Club and I urge you to check out the 25,000 plus reviews of different resort locations and if you want help planning one of your vacations, feel free to reach out to us. We'd love to point you in the right direction.
Speaker 1:Thank you for being on, sir, really appreciate it. Hope you all enjoyed that episode. If you did, make sure I like, share, subscribe, uh, share with somebody. You like someone you don't like. You don't like, just uh any and all, uh, any and all things you can do to move the channel forward means the world costs nothing. That's this episode. Until next time I'm your host, denny corby. Catch you on the flip.
