For decades, Portugal’s Algarve has attracted golfers with a simple yet tantalizing proposition: championship courses, reliable sunshine and some of Europe’s best value. Days begin with tee times and end over bites of grilled octopus and sips of vinho verde along the craggy Atlantic coast, where, as Portugal’s national poet Luís de Camões famously wrote, “the land ends and the sea begins.”
Yet value wasn’t always the region’s calling card. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Algarve ranked among Europe’s premier golf destinations before years of underinvestment and the rise of mass-market package tourism gradually repositioned it as a more affordable golf getaway.
But now, backed by one of Europe’s largest private real estate investors, a new Ernie Els-designed private club and ambitions that stretch well beyond tourism, the Algarve has come full circle, climbing back to the first page of European golf’s leaderboard.
The timing may be fortuitous. A recent Expatsi survey of more than 116,000 Americans ranked Portugal as the No. 1 country they would most like to relocate to, indicative of a broader shift that could reshape the country’s golf bastion, turning the Algarve from a place to visit for a week into one where many choose to buy a second home or even live year-round.
Call it a Comeback
British investment and asset management firm Arrow Global manages a €2.6 billion portfolio in Portugal, with a colossal concentration in the Algarve region. The firm invested approximately €17 million to replace, rather than simply renovate, the former Victoria Course. Ernie Els’ redesign reversed the back-nine routing and rebuilt every green and fairway from the ground up.
The investment received its first major showcase this past weekend when Portugal hosted its first-ever PGA Tour Champions event at The Els Club Vilamoura, the Algarve’s first private golf club. In its previous incarnation as the Victoria Golf Course, the venue hosted the Portugal Masters from 2007 to 2022, with a roll of champions that includes Shane Lowry, Thomas Pieters and Jordan Smith. But for Arrow Global, the tournament represented more than a European sojourn for the senior circuit—it was the public debut of the firm’s broader strategy to reposition the Algarve.
Nuno Sepúlveda, co-CEO of Details, which operates Arrow Global Portugal’s golf, hospitality and leisure assets in Vilamoura, argues the Algarve’s luxury ambitions are less a reinvention than a restoration. Three decades ago, he said, the region ranked among Europe’s premier golf destinations, with Vilamoura and Quinta do Lago setting standards that golfers across the continent came to study. But the rise of charter flights and package holidays gradually shifted the market toward volume. While Spain continued investing heavily in its leading golf resorts and courses over the following two decades, Algarve operators had instead “squeezed the business to the bone,” prioritizing short-term returns over reinvestment.
By the late 2010s, many of the region’s flagship courses were roughly 30 years old, making further price increases increasingly difficult to justify. Then came what Sepúlveda described as a “perfect storm”: post-pandemic demand for outdoor recreation combined with fresh private capital, creating an opportunity to reinvest in the product and reposition the Algarve at the premium end of the market. “You can’t just write a nice article or advertisement and say, ‘Now we’re premium.’ You have to deliver on a promise,” he said.
The Long Game
But restoring the Algarve’s reputation means thinking beyond golf alone. Sepúlveda sees the sport as the catalyst for a broader luxury ecosystem spanning hospitality, real estate and year-round living. Only about 20% of homeowners in golf resorts actually play golf, he noted, with many instead drawn by the security, amenities and sense of community surrounding the courses. “If you create a great destination with great amenities, and a very appealing ecosystem, you fall in love with the place and then you buy a house,” he said. Golf is one of three established pillars of Vilamoura—alongside the marina and beaches—with a €25 million equestrian center for 1,000 horses and a new sports center planned to broaden the destination’s appeal well beyond the fairways.
That premium repositioning is already evident at The Els Club, where membership requires a €100,000 initiation fee and new memberships are released in limited quarterly tranches.
Sepúlveda insists the Algarve cannot command those prices through marketing alone. “You cannot just do it by price or by good marketing—you need to deliver on a product,” he said, pointing to investments in golf courses, hotels and infrastructure. “Portugal has no alternative. We’re a small country. We have to be premium. We don’t have 500 golf courses—we have about 70. We have to position ourselves at the high end of the market.”
Els believes the cranes currently dotting the Vilamoura skyline are a flashing indicator of a new uplift cycle. Looking back, he said he still regrets not buying a rental home in nearby Quinta do Lago when he and his wife Liezl first fell in love with the Algarve 20-something years ago. “Get in now,” he said with a laugh. “Twenty-five years later I wish I had bought it because it’s a very different price now. I think the same will happen down here.”
Three-time major champion Padraig Harrington has spent years vacationing in the Algarve with his family and believes Portugal has re-emerged as one of Europe’s premier destinations for golfers from Northern Europe looking to eventually own a second home.
“This is where my family comes on holiday in the summer. We’ve been coming for quite a while. We tend to rent when we come down here, but it’s certainly a place that, when I retire—which some people would say is never—I’d definitely buy.”
Harrington credits Portugal’s combination of high-quality golf, thoughtful planning and disciplined development for that resurgence. Unlike many destinations where golf courses became an afterthought to residential construction, he contends Portugal largely did the opposite. “They built the golf courses on the prime land. The golf courses are of a way higher standard in general than you would normally find, because they are not an afterthought—they tend to be the first thought,” he said.
Can the Algarve successfully reposition itself from one of Europe’s best-value golf destinations into one of Europe’s top luxury golf lifestyle markets? If Details has its druthers, that transformation is already on the back nine. Whether golfers and prospective homeowners embrace that vision as enthusiastically as investors have may ultimately determine whether the strategy succeeds.
