I think some of these resorts can make sense. For those of us that have real winters and want to do a winter golf trip to Florida, where can you go for quality golf? There is lots of mediocre places, but very few resorts or even cities that have world class courses. Streamsong came along and kind of filled that void, and now we have Cabot Citrus about to join it.
How many world-class courses can be built before some of them no longer qualify as world class?
Cabot Citrus is interesting... it appears they're on their way to being one more $300+ per round destination, joining Sawgrass and Bay Hill and Streamsong and Doral and others in Florida alone. For the last few years, whenever I've traveled to high end destination courses, I don't exactly get a sense that there's a lack of demand due to market oversaturation.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are plenty of affordable golf resorts that my local friends still look forward to visiting for their annual buddies' #CansAndCarts weekends. We don't talk much on this site about Peninsula, Perry Park, and Fairway in Wheatley, but they stay booked solid all season long. With many Michiganders! I cannot believe that people drive 6+ hours to get to Bright Leaf specifically, but they do.
It's the World Woods-type courses that seem like they're disappearing - places that are reasonably affordable and also provide very good and interesting architecture. I tried to come up with a good spring thaw-out trip earlier this year. I wanted to find a spot in the Southeast US that was semi-reasonably priced while still offering interesting architecture. Seemed like the options were basically "Come up with a package in the Southern Pines region, or go to Mossy Oak/Old Waverley."
I guess my hope would be that there IS a destination golf bubble forming, and that when it bursts, we'll have a lot more options in that "just right" pocket that I was looking for. But I'm not holding my breath - I suspect it's another case of the disappearing middle class.