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By Steve Eubanks
More than two decades since its founding, the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail continues to attract golfers and non-golfers alike to Alabama
There’s comfort in consistency and a sense of hominess that follows familiar surroundings. Those idioms of the human condition were at the forefront of the philosophy of Alabama’s Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail when the first course opened in Birmingham more than two decades ago.
The brainchild of Dr. David Bronner and funded by the Alabama teachers’ pension fund, the Trail was developed on the notion that golf would entice people from the Northeast and Midwest to stop in Alabama on their way to Florida. As Bronner said in an interview more than a decade ago, “If you’re driving to Florida, you have to go through either Georgia or Alabama. We wanted to funnel more of that traffic through Alabama and hopefully get people to extend their trip by playing golf here.”
To do that, Bronner created a home-away-from-home consistency, branding the Trail as one entity instead of a collection of courses. There was one architect for the entire Trail, one clubhouse design, one logo, and the bag drops, parking lots, dining outlets, employee uniforms and pricing structures looked almost identical from Muscle Shoals to Mobile. That model worked for many years, especially after the RTJ Golf Trail struck a deal with Marriott to build on-site hotels at many of the properties.
But the realities of the golf business are much different in 2014 than they were in the early 1990s, and the men and women of Sunbelt Golf Management, which operates the RTJ Golf Trail, have had to creatively adapt as their market has changed.
“In the early days, we wanted people to start at one end and play to the other, the entire Trail, and many of them did just that,” says Pete Rouillard, vice president of operations for Sunbelt. “But in today’s world, we know that people can’t take off for that long. Even retirees aren’t going to travel to all of our sites and play multiple courses each day.”
These days, Sunbelt encourages golfers to take three vacations and play the Trail in thirds—a northern (Alabama) vacation, a central vacation and a southern vacation. “It might be the spring of the next three years, and that’s OK,” Rouillard notes.
Sunbelt has also found that it’s now competing with golf destinations that weren’t on its radar in the 1990s. “For many years, we were a value-driven golf destination,” Rouillard explains. “People could travel here and play great golf for less than any comparable experience anywhere. Now, because of the struggles in the industry, you can go to Hilton Head, Pinehurst, Myrtle Beach and other golf areas for a reasonable price, not because our prices have gone up, but because the average price for golf in those locations has come down.”
In response, Sunbelt officials have created some different, value-added touches within the Trail. Each grill menu, for example, has four pages, three of which remain uniform with one page unique to each facility.
“If you’re at our Mobile site, you’ll find local seafood on that one page,” Rouillard says. “We have one property that’s near a catfish farm, so we have local catfish on the menu. That gives each site its own personality while retaining the comfort level for people who have visited our other sites.”
But there’s also a higher calling for the RTJ Golf Trail, one that every Sunbelt staff member, from the cart attendant to the beverage cart driver, recognizes. According to Rouillard, the owner’s mission was clear: “This concept was designed, first and foremost, to change the image and attitude people have about Alabama. It’s not about golf first. Once you’ve changed image and attitude, suddenly it’s easier to attract industry, it’s easier to attract residents, and it’s easier to develop tourism, not just around our sites, but throughout the entire state.”
On that front, the Trail has been a monumental success. Mercedes Benz, Hyundai, Toyota, Navistar, Airbus, Austal Ship Building and many other large-scale companies have relocated to Alabama in the 20 years since the Trail first opened. And while no one claims that a series of golf courses led Daimler executives in Germany to pick Alabama over other suitors, the Trail, which has hosted LPGA, Nationwide and PGA Tour events consistently since 1997, has gone a long way toward changing people’s impressions of the state.
“Obviously, the game is the platform from which we work, and my job from an operational standpoint is to maintain the quality and consistency every day so that the customer knows what to expect,” Rouillard proclaims. “But we understand that there is a much bigger picture out there. Our operations play a role in painting that larger picture.”
Steve Eubanks is an Atlanta-based freelance writer.