Beyond Court Time: Why Clubs and Coaches Are Looking to Asia for 2027 Travel Revenue

Beyond Court Time: Why Clubs and Coaches Are Looking to Asia for 2027 Travel Revenue

How pickleball growth across Southeast Asia is giving club directors, teaching pros, and travel advisors a turnkey model for hosted member trips

By Jaron Shoptaugh and Ryan Magill | thepickleballpassport.org | @pickleball.passport

In the October issue of Racket Business, we shared how a one-way ticket to Thailand and a local court community turned into The Pickleball Passport. Since that piece ran, we've had interesting conversations with club owners, racquet directors, teaching pros, and travel advisors asking a blunt business question coming into 2027.

"When court time alone starts feeling like a commodity, how do you keep your best players tied to your club while adding revenue that does not require pouring more resources?"

For a growing group of clubs and coaches, the answer is hosted international pickleball travel. Right now, the fastest-moving proving ground for how that model works is Southeast Asia.

What Is Happening on the Courts in Asia Right Now

If you only follow North American facility news, it is easy to miss how quickly pickleball is growing across Asia. We see it every week from our home base in Bangkok, as courts fill up across Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, and Australia.

From November 2 to 5, we are hosting our four-day Bangkok Clinic Week. Players are flying in from regional hubs and abroad for four mornings of structured instruction, video analysis, and organized match play alongside local Thai players, followed by afternoons on the river and evenings in Chinatown.

Watching how regional players and visiting Westerners use a week like this taught us something practical about the business of pickleball travel. Not every player wants the same trip length, and not every club community travels the same way.

When we launched our first departure in July 2026, we built around a single format: our nine-day, eight-night Thailand flagship journey through Bangkok and Chiang Mai, with an optional three-night beach extension in Phuket. For players flying twelve to twenty hours from the United States, Canada, or Europe, nine to twelve days is just the right length. Our next winter flagship runs January 14 to 22, 2027 across Bangkok and Chiang Mai, pairing morning clinics, inter-club match play against Thai players, and a championship tournament day with five-star riverside and mountain resort stays, canal boats, night markets, and Thai cooking classes.

When we sat down with club operators and coaches in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Hong Kong, they told us something different. Their players are in their thirties through fifties. They have strong disposable income and a short two-and-a-half-hour flight to Bangkok, not wanting to take two full weeks away from work. Meanwhile, Western players already traveling through Asia for business or family holidays kept asking if they could drop into high-level coaching and social play in Bangkok for a few days without booking a nine-day tour.

That feedback pushed us to build three distinct trip formats heading into 2027:

• Four-Day Bangkok Clinic Weeks: Standalone four-day coaching and match-play blocks in Bangkok, starting with our November 2 to 5 session, where traveling players or regional flyers sharpen their game and plug directly into the local Bangkok pickleball community.

• Three-to-Five-Day Luxury Regional Trips: Short, single-base or Bangkok and Hua Hin beach trips built around long weekends for Asian clubs, or as warm-up extensions for international travelers. Keeping a three-or-four-day trip at a single five-star base means groups spend their weekend on the court and in the city rather than in domestic airport lines.

• Nine-Day Flagship Cultural and Championship Immersions: Our signature Bangkok and Chiang Mai itineraries for North American, European, and Australian clubs, pros, and private groups seeking a once-a-year bucket-list trip.

Why Club Directors Hesitate to Run Overseas Trips

Almost every club owner or head pro we speak with likes the idea of taking a boutique group of members on an international trip. Travel builds friendships that keep members renewing at their home facility for years. A group that sweats through a morning round-robin in Bangkok and splits crab fried rice on a Chinatown sidewalk comes home tighter than any Tuesday night league could make them.

Still, most club directors never pull the trigger. Or they try it once in Mexico or the Caribbean and swear they will never do it again.

The reason is simple. Teaching pros and club managers already have full-time jobs. When a pro tries to piece together an overseas trip alone, they become an unpaid travel agent, van dispatcher, hotel negotiator, and midnight problem solver. If a driver is late, a court booking falls through, or a guest gets sick in a country where the pro does not speak the language, the pro takes the heat.

How an On-the-Ground Partner Changes the Math

The shift we are seeing for 2027 is a clear division of labor between the home club and a dedicated on-the-ground team backed by a local Thai destination management company.

In our model, the club director, teaching pro, or travel advisor focuses on the two things they already own: trust with their members and leadership on the court. Once their group lands in Thailand, American founders Ryan Magill and Jaron Shoptaugh on the ground alongside our bilingual Thai staff and local coordinators handle every operational detail from airport arrival to departure.

That structure changes the math for a club, coach, or travel operator in three ways:

1. New Travel Revenue Without Capital Expense: Instead of relying only on court fees and lessons at home, our partners can plug into a turnkey partner structure across referral partnerships, co-hosted flagship or regional trips, and private white-label charters, generating meaningful new revenue on every trip or passing part of that value back as a member perk.

2. A Turnkey Hosted Experience for the Pro or Club Leader: When a pro or club organizer brings a group to Thailand, they step into a hosted leadership role alongside their best students while our team on the ground handles the resort contracts, private vans, luggage transfers, dining tables, and local Thai player matchups.

3. Member Retention Through Shared Experience: As Racket Business pointed out in October, the real test for facilities right now is retention. Players might switch clubs over a small drop-in fee, but they rarely leave the club that allowed them to travel across the world together.

Three Practical Takeaways for Club Owners and Pros in 2027

Whether you look at Southeast Asia or closer to home, here is what works when adding travel to a 2027 club calendar:

• Survey Your Players on Window and Duration First: Ask your regulars when they actually like to travel. North American and European groups do best with six to nine months of lead time for a nine-day winter or spring trip. Regional clubs within a three-hour flight radius convert fastest on three-to-five-day holiday weekends.

• Focus on an Intimate Group, Not a Crowd: You do not need to charter a cruise ship to run a rewarding club trip. An intimate group fills faster, eats together at one table, and lets every guest rotate on court with the hosting pro and local players.

• Never Run Ground Logistics Yourself: Partner with an on-the-ground team that lives in the destination full-time, works alongside a local destination management company, and knows the club owners and court schedules first-hand. Your job on a club trip should be hitting balls with your members in the morning and enjoying dinner with them at night.

If you are a club owner, racquet director, teaching pro, or travel operator looking to add international pickleball travel to your 2027 calendar, we would love to share what we are building and explore how a referral partnership, a co-hosted flagship or regional trip, or a private white-label charter can work for your community. Reach out to us at [email protected] or visit thepickleballpassport.org. Come play the world with us.

Ryan Magill and Jaron Shoptaugh

Cousins Ryan Magill and Jaron Shoptaugh (a 4.8 DUPR player and APP Tour medalist) co-founded The Pickleball Passport, which hosts pickleball trips, clinic weeks, and private club charters through Thailand built around play, culture, and people worth knowing. Based in Bangkok alongside their bilingual Thai team, they partner with clubs, coaches, and travel advisors worldwide to run turnkey Southeast Asia pickleball trips. It all started with a paddle, a one-way ticket, and no plan: thepickleballpassport.org.