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Almost 24 months have passed since Peter Bonell was appointed chief marketing officer of the Casa de Campo resort, and as the creator of Casa de Campo’s new “The Sporting Life” brand, we got together with Mr. Bonell to find out what exactly is The Sporting Life, and how this new focus is helping to evolve the resort we know and love.
@cdcliving: Tell us about The Sporting Life
The Sporting Life was created as our new theme and new direction in branding. The reason we did this was to enable us to compete on an equal playing field with other Caribbean resorts with beaches. We don’t have that type of beach, we don’t have rooms on the beach, but what we do have is country club amenities. So we put that concept together and we first came up with “the country club of the Caribbean”, but we thought that was a little too broad, we liked it, but it was a little too elitist. So we asked ourselves, what makes Casa de Campo different? Whether you are a resident or a guest, what type of environment are we creating? And that’s when we came up with The Sporting Life, it’s the perfect reflection of who we are and what we do. For example, the Fanjuls, Papo Menendez, Eduardo Lima and Alfonso Panigua, are all elegant sportsman. It’s been hugely successfully so far, it hit a niche that no-one can compete with in Latin America.
@cdcliving: Can you give me an example of a day in The Sporting Life?
We encourage people to go online and look at our website, so they can understand how they can develop a day based on sports. Golf is 4 to 5 hours so that’s a lot of your day, but in between those hours of playing golf, you can do other things, so we like to have people look at the website and plan a calendar.
They can go horseback riding, shooting at the shooting range, but if they want to be advanced at either they can go to Rancho Peligro, our 10,000 acre ranch about 40 minutes away. At Rancho Peligro they can go riding and also do a live shoot.
You can go to the Marina Casa de Campo and you can go sailing at our sailing school, deep sea fishing on one of our charters, so that covers the aquatic side of it. You can go to our beach, you can use our rafts, go kayaking on the river, play tennis on one of our clay courts, and then the other part of it is just relaxation and going to the spa.
@cdcliving: How are you encouraging people to try different types of sports?
In most cases, golfers have a hobby or other sport they like to dabble in. Shooting is a unique opportunity, obviously most of us don’t do it too often, but it’s something that if you try out you will probably enjoy. In the afternoon, if you want to play a quick game of tennis, or go to the Marina Casa de Campo or go shooting, we can combine them all and show you how to split up your day. A golfer will golf for sure, but a tennis player has so much free time that there are many other things they can do as well, so we build it around that. We also have events and clinics going on throughout the day.
@cdcliving: What are some of the most popular activities for families?
Horseback riding is hugely popular with families. Tennis is also very popular with families, because you can play a foursome or you can play doubles. Golf is something we’re promoting more and more to young families, with children’s clinics offered by the Jim McLean Golf School. Sailing is popular luxury experience, any aquatic sport is popular with families, they love doing that at the beach. We are still developing thr shooting center for families, that’s a skill set that’s developed early in life, probably by being a part of something related to hunting or shooting, but we’re working on that as well. Those are the keys – the more traditional sports.
We’re also working on soccer camps and more for this summer. We have a summer camp called GTA – golf and tennis – we also threw in soccer, it’s a great activity for the kids.
Calixto García-Vélez, Armando Favela, Tom Duffield and Peter Bonell
@cdcliving: Do you have any key The Sporting Life ambassadors?
Yes we do. We’re very lucky, all of our directors of sports are very well known and very skilled in their field. Our managing director of sports, Calixto García-Vélez is a world class polo player, but he understands all the sports. He’s a great golfer, great shooter, great sailor, great fisherman, and obviously equestrian, so he’s kind of the poster child for that. We have wonderful villa owners who are also great sportsmen and they promote our facilities in their clubs in the US or abroad. We really emphasise the importance of sports to all our employees, whether it’s in the uniform they wear, or the type of verbage they use to talk about sports, it’s a way to separate ourselves from the competition.
@cdcliving: What makes Casa de Campo so special for sports?
They are all in one area, you don’t have to travel. Everything is on campus with the exception of Rancho Peligro which is still very close, everything is right here and you can get there in your golf cart. So we don’t have to put you on a bus and take you 6 miles away to something, everything is right here, everything is world class, everything is basically on steroids it’s so large. It’s not a makeshift “we have a pool and a tennis court”, we have 16 tennis courts, 5 golf courses, 4 polo fields and we have 200 stations on the Sporting Clays Circuit. We can proudly say we’re a sporting mecca, because we really are.
@cdcliving: What steps have you been taking to infuse The Sporting Life into everything that the Casa de Campo resort does?
We have new uniforms, tags and a new logo, we’re incorporating it into all print material, digital, packaging, and hosting events directed at The Sporting Life.
We are doing an event with Garden and Gun magazine for Halloween weekend, with world champion shooting celebrity Chris Batha, and CEO of Garden and Gun and renowned author, Rebecca Darwin.
Other exciting sporting activities to look forward to also include the John McEnroe visit in November, the play-offs of the World Polo Championship in November and Decemeber, as well as the ‘Casa de Campo Corre’ a 10K marathon for the Hogar del Niño and a DR Open Amateur golf tournament.
The Sporting Life is predominant in everything we say and do, the way we answer emails, everything, it’s a culture change.
We’ve asked the staff, especially reservations, sales and marketing to take up a new a sport and learn from our experts, whether it’s Emilio Vasquez, or the Jim McLean school, or Calixto García-Vélez or the Shooting Center. We want them to own it and understand it, so when we’re talking to our clients they know what they’re talking about. It’s been really successful, the staff loves it and now we’re encouraging other departments to do the same thing.
@cdcliving: Are there any areas that need improving in terms of sports?
We need to develop and, update some of our facilities and the Board has been very good about that, listening and understanding our proposals. As we continue to grow in marketing and advertising we have to match that in our appearance. The good news is that we have a lot of very interested sponsors, Adidas and Taylormade, we have Clubcar, Easygo, Sports Illustrated, Cigar Aficionado, American Express, United Brands everyone wants to be part of The Sporting Life, so we are able to pick and choose. We want to name our tennis facility, our shooting facility, our polo facility, I think it’s the proper think to do to merge with the right kind of sponsors.
@cdcliving: What is the future of Casa de Campo and The Sporting Life?
The Sporting Life will thrive. The Sporting Life is now our culture. Getting events of world class magnitude is the key, we’re hosting a polo event in November, which is a regional event for the world championships. We have to do the same thing with tennis when we bring McEnroe here. We need to bring world class events here, so people understand that we are serious about this. We want to host events in the amphitheatre related to The Sporting Life, things of that nature.
@cdcliving: How do you live The Sporting Life?
I play tennis everyday but Sunday, and on Sunday I play golf, and I play golf one other time during the week. I play golf and tennis religiously and I also have a keen interest in sports in general.
@cdcliving: What about adding a Sports bar?
We’d like to see that as part of our future, because what we’re missing is a great venue for watching sporting events like the World Cup. We can improvise, but as we move forward we will need to have a sports bar, somewhere our guests can relax. That will really pull everything together.
@cdcliving: What about people who are not interested in sports?
We welcome and cherish all our guests, however, to be perfectly honest with you, I have to say that it probably won’t be a good fit, because if you’re not here to enjoy the sports it would almost be like going to Vegas and not playing the slot machine.