For the last 3 years, I've served as the NC government relation chairman for the golf industry. We recently engaged to help of an outside firm to conduct a NC golf economic impact study. Below is an excerpt from an email exchange that sheds some light on the subject:
"Overall, I think
there has been strong recovery in North Carolina’s golf industry (broadly
defined), since the great recession except for the decline in net golf
facilities and alternative facilities (e.g., miniature golf) over the past 10
years. Golf facility operations and tourism are the only segments that showed
actual declines compared to 2011. The decline in tourism is down largely due to
a drop from 3% to 2% of people who say they participated in golf while on a trip
to NC (based on an annual survey conducted by the state tourism office). I do
want to check and see if 2016 was an outlier, or if there are multiple years
where the percentage of people participating in golf while on a trip is down.
Will try to do this before our call tomorrow.
When we ran the
impact calculations, we found that NC’s $2.366 billion golf industry supported
$3.738 billion in total economic activity, 36,688 jobs, and $1.156 billion in
labor income across the state. The golf industry also generated $151.8 million
in state and local taxes when the industry’s secondary and tertiary economic
impacts were included."