La Grande Mare
Client-side technology leadership on a phased premium golf venue development, Guernsey
Project Background
When Stephen Lansdown CBE took on La Grande Mare hotel and golf course on Guernsey’s west coast, the intention was to rebuild it as something the Channel Islands did not yet have: a genuinely premium, multi-phase golf and leisure destination set in more than 100 acres of parkland, with a course redesigned by Robin Hiseman of European Golf Design, the official golf course design company of the PGA European Tour Group and Ryder Cup Europe. The ambition the owner set for everybody involved was uncompromising: to be “Always Extraordinary”.
That ambition created a problem common to golf and rare elsewhere. A destination built from the ground up has no incumbent technology function and no internal specialist to translate a hospitality vision into technology systems, and yet the decisions that matter most are taken earliest, while the buildings are still drawings. Containment, riser space, power and cable routes are fixed during design and construction; the systems that depend on them are usually chosen years later. The gap between the two is where cost, compromise and retrofit live.
The golf technology market compounds the risk; vendor choice is narrower than it appears, ownership of “competing” platforms is often shared, and much of the available advice comes from organisations with a product to sell. La Grande Mare needed an adviser whose only interest was the venue’s own.
In 2023, PTI was appointed to design and deliver La Grande Mare’s technology strategy and to act as its client-side technology lead for the duration of the programme; the equivalent of the role the project manager plays on construction and the MEP consultant plays on services, from requirements capture through vendor selection to go-live.
Our Approach and Responsibilities included
- Mapping the customer journey for every user type – member, visiting golfer, venue guest, coach and staff – from touching down in Guernsey to walking off the 18th
- Translating those journeys into a defined technology estate, categorised as Foundational, Operational, and Experience & Engagement, so investment could be sequenced
- Establishing the technology vision and strategy, working backwards from the venue’s commercial and membership objectives rather than forwards from a catalogue of products
- Ensuring connectivity was designed into the build, down to specifying comms ducting between areas of the venue to serve both current and future phases
- Defining, scoping and running end-to-end vendor selection on the client’s behalf, on a strictly vendor-agnostic basis, then managing each supplier through delivery
- Acting as the interface between technology and the wider project team – project managers, cost consultants, architects and contractors – aligned to the RIBA stages
- Sequencing delivery so that each opening had a working platform on day one, without designing the later phases into a corner
The Results
The customer journey work identified over 40 technology systems, platforms and workflows, each traceable to a defined moment in a guest or member experience. The result is an estate that follows the customer rather than the product roadmap, and an owner in control of it. Because PTI was appointed at the drawing board rather than at fit-out, technology has been an input to the build, not a consequence of it.
- Connectivity and containment designed in at construction stage, removing the retrofit cost and physical compromise that typically accompany late technology decisions
- Vendor-agnostic selection run on the client’s behalf for every major system, including the end-to-end process to select and deliver Trackman for the Golf Performance Centre – La Grande Mare buying on its own terms, with no adviser incentive in the outcome
- The Golf Performance Centre opened in 2025 with its range, swing-analysis and ball-tracking technology and connectivity live from day one; a new website and tee-time booking platform followed in June 2026, in time for the on-sale ahead of the course opening on 1 August 2026
- A phased roadmap carrying into the Country Club in 2027 and the luxury lodges in 2028, extending to tuition, club fitting, property and restaurant management: capability added once to a shared foundation, not bought five times over
- A single view of the customer designed in across golf, hospitality, retail and leisure, to support the guest strategy, upsell and advocacy without being intrusive or gratuitous
- No internal technology function required; PTI provides the venue’s technology leadership as a service (CTOaaS) – a capability La Grande Mare has not had to build and carry in-house
Perhaps the most transferable outcome is one of governance. La Grande Mare has a documented record of why every system was chosen, what it was measured against and which customer journey it serves – which is what allows a decision taken in 2023 to still make sense when the project completes in 2028.
