Chinese will be major players in isle tourism, Shark predicts

Chinese visitors, long seen as the next growth market for Hawaii tourism, soon may be hitting the islands’ links in growing numbers with the help of a Chinese entrepreneur and one of the most recognizable golfers in the world.

Pacific Links International, title sponsor of this week’s Pacific Links Hawaii Championship at Kapolei Golf Course, will launch a membership program in China on Tuesday that will use Hawaii as a hub for golfers seeking to play multiple courses in the United States. More than 1,000 Chinese, representing 54 of the 73 top clubs in Beijing, are expected at the event.

Owned by Chinese entrepreneur Du Sha, Pacific Links has bought four Oahu golf courses in the past two years and is negotiating to buy two more on Maui.

PGA Tour professional Greg Norman, who was in Honolulu as the ambassador for the inaugural 54-hole Pacific Links Hawaii Championship that begins Friday, said the future economic impact of Chinese golf tourism for Hawaii is staggering.

"Once this thing fully matures with 25,000 members, think about 25,000 new golfers coming into Hawaii. It will be a huge economic impact because they’re not coming for just one day, they’re coming for multiple days," said Norman, the featured speaker Wednesday at a business luncheon sponsored by First Hawaiian Bank at the Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort.

Norman, 57, withdrew from this week’s Champions Tour event to attend a funeral in Southampton, N.Y., on Saturday for Maria Floyd, the wife of fellow PGA member and longtime friend Raymond Floyd.

But he intends to be in China on Tuesday to kick off the Pacific Links event. Unlike a traditional golf membership, Pacific Links provides members access to any of its golf courses around the world.

Du Sha, founder of the 97-store Home World Group in China, was listed by Forbes last year as the 272nd richest person in China with a net worth of $655 million.

Norman, whose first professional win in the United States was at the Kapalua International on Maui in 1983, said he expects the high-spending Chinese visitors will spread their money around at more than just Hawaii’s golf courses.

"I know that the Chinese like to experience everything that goes on around," he said. "I’ve seen them come into pro shops and buy 20 shirts, 30 shirts. So the rub-off that will take place economic-wise will be huge."

Chinese visitors are the highest-spending group that comes to Hawaii. They spent $407 per person, per day on average through the first half of this year, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Total visitor spending from China more than doubled in the first half of the year to $150.6 million from $71 million for the first six months of 2011. Visitor arrivals from China rose 42.9 percent to 49,171 in the first half, from 34,413 in the year-earlier period.

Micah Kane, chief operating officer for Pacific Links Hawaii and a Kamehameha Schools trustee, said over the past year that the company tested the Hawaii market and its business model by bringing in close to 300 high-net-worth Chinese individuals.

"They would leave China and come to Hawaii to play our golf courses here, and then fly to the continent to play our assets there and then go back," Kane said. "We’ve been bringing through our sales people, marketing people and branding people, and what is happening now is a culmination of those activities next week. We’re going to launch our brand to bring that membership to Hawaii, and we’re going to have to be ready to take those members as they come through Hawaii and start visiting our assets throughout the country."

The China Golf Association predicts that China will have 20 million golfers by 2020.

Norman said the appetite for golf among the Chinese appears to be insatiable.

"One developer in Hainan is building 12 golf courses in one development at one time," Norman said. "That’s a huge undertaking, but he’s getting the people there playing each golf course and right now he’s probably playing close to 600,000 rounds of golf a year."

Golf may become more popular when it returns as an Olympic sport in the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil.

Last week, Pacific Links said it is negotiating a purchase of the Royal Ka‘anapali and Ka‘anapali Kai golf courses on Maui from the state Employees’ Retirement System.

Pacific Links made its first Hawaii acquisition in September 2010 with Kapolei Golf Course. Last year it bought Makaha Golf Course West, which is currently under renovation by Norman, and then bought the neighboring Makaha Valley Country Club in March. In May the company bought the 18-hole Olomana Golf Links course in Waimanalo.

The former Luana Hills course in Kailua, now called Royal Hawaiian Golf Club, is managed, but not owned, by Pacific Links.

Outside Hawaii, affiliates of Pacific Links operate two golf courses in Las Vegas, a course in West Virginia and one in China.

The Australia-born Norman, who goes by the moniker "Great White Shark," oversees more than a dozen businesses as part of his Great White Shark Enterprises. His career accomplishments include 20 PGA Tour victories — including two British Opens — and the distinction of having held the world’s No. 1 ranking for 331 weeks.

He said the U.S. golf industry, which began slumping in 2007, appears to be on its way back.

"There’s trillions of dollars on the sideline, waiting to be invested because people are getting sick and tired of zero percent money," he said. "Golf is going to be the benefactor of it."