Pestana Hotels and Resorts facilitates online booking on 4 of their Algarve courses through GolfSwitch.

Pestana's portfolio of four outstanding courses has become the first on the Algarve to sign up to GolfSwitch, the world's largest online, real time, tee-time distribution network.

Tee-time bookings at the Gramacho, Vale da Pinta, Silves and Alto Golf courses - located between Lagoa and Portimao - may now be booked online through either the Pestana golf website or Golfhub, GolfSwitch's European golf portal site.

Click on this link to see Pestana's available tee times

Pestana Golf & Resorts is one of the leading hotel,golf & property resorts on the Algarve with affordable golf at top-class facilities. Two of the Pestana Courses - Gramacho and Vale da Pinta - have already hosted big events.

The Ronald Fream and Nick Price-designed Gramacho has hosted the Portuguese Ladies Open on a number of occasions, while Vale da Pinta has welcomed the European Seniors Tour final qualifying event.

Alto was the last course designed by Sir Henry Cotton and has a 600m par-five known as the 'Sir Henry Challenge'. The shorter, but nonetheless challenging, Silves course offers spectacular views of the surrounding mountains near the medieval town of the same name.

Jo Maes, GolfSwitch's director of European development, said: "We have been in talks with Algarve Tourism Association (ATA) for some time now and we are obviously delighted that with its support we have started connecting the Algarve golf courses to the network.

Pestana was the quickest of the mark as they acknowledged that online bookings are the future of golf, not only for our tour operators but to go with the emerging trend of golfers booking direct."

Rui Gago, Pestana's director of golf, added: "We have been looking at adding a live booking engine to our site for some time now, but for whatever reason we were never comfortable that the companies involved where able to deliver.

From the start we were impressed with the professionalism displayed by GolfSwitch. Now we are delighted to be the first property in the Algarve to be connected to the GolfSwitch network."

Pestana will have different booking options through their website with each individual course bearing a separate engine or a portal booking engine linked from the homepage where golfers can book rounds on various courses on different days using the GolfSwitch shopping cart facility. Further down the line, GolfSwitch will add a Direct Access system where tour operators and other partners will be able to book rounds of golf and packages online with their agreed economics.

Connecting courses in the Algarve will allow the ATA (Algarve Tourism Association) to add a portal site to its website where golfers and the different resellers can book rounds of golf in real time directly with the golf courses.

Resellers like TUI - Europe's largest tour operator - and Golf.de - Germany's largest golf website - have already indicated that with Spain already connected, having live access to the Portuguese courses has become a priority. There will be some some major partner announcements over the next week and with those, GolfSwitch will start directing a significant number of bookings to the Portuguese golf courses connected to the GolfSwitch network.

The lo-res image attached shows Rui Gago, Pestana's Director of Golf, right, with GolfSwitch's Jo Maes. Please contact Azalea's Dave Bowers (dave@theazaleagroup.com) if you would like to receive a HiRes version.

GolfSwitch is continuing its expansion into Europe with many major golf resorts joining the network and availing themselves of the many online solutions on offer. Spanish courses have already been connected for some time now and are starting to understand that having an active online presence and many promotions adds another sales channel to the organisation and significantly increases revenue.
www.golfswitch.com | www.golfhub.com | www.pestanagolf.com

Information for journalists:

• GolfSwitch is the world's largest online real time tee time distribution network. With more than 1,500 connected courses and four-million transactions processed per year, GolfSwitch has become the go-to organisation to market available tee times.
• Outside of the USA, GolfSwitch's European network connects courses in GB&I, the Benelux countries, France, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Germany. It is currently developing the network to expand into Eastern Europe, North Africa and Scandinavia. Resellers include some of the biggest travel companies in Europe with TUI and all their brands, Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity and many other smaller tour operators. Its own community platform Golfhub already covers a large part of Europe and, with more and more communities coming online in various countries, Golfhub is steadily becoming Europe's largest online golf community.
• GolfSwitch and Golfhub are completely PCI compliant and have Safe Harbour certificates.
• Pestana Golf & Resorts stands for 'Golf & Lifestyle'. Pestana consists of four golf courses in the Algarve (Gramacho, Vale de Pinta, Silves Golf and Alto) and one near Lisbon (Beloura).

For more media information please contact the Azelea Group:
Dave Bowers on tel. +44 (0)1730 711920 or email dave@theazaleagroup.com

For more information and on how to connect to the Golfswitch network, contact:
Jo Maes (jmaes@golfswitch.com) - Director of European Operations
Mob +351.912957146

Denise Gallagher (denise.gallagher@golfhub.eu) - Marketing Director
Mob +351.912735082

GolfSwitch International Ltd - www.golfhub.eu
Office:  +353.1.4429016
Skype Acc: jo_maes

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Golfhub.ie
GolfBUZZ.ie
Golfswitch.com