Planning golf trips can be a lot of work. Between booking travel, getting the right tee times at good golf courses, and coordination of who can go on the trip, it becomes a lot to handle.
Planning a trip as a college golf team can become even more difficult, given there are restrictions on where you can stay, excessive costs for renting cars and trip fundraising. Below are 4 tips that should be helpful while planning a golf trip.
1) Designate leaders
Have you ever heard the saying “there are too many cooks in the kitchen?” When planning a golf trip for multiple people, it’s great to get opinions of everyone for where to go, stay, and play, but with too many opinions travel planning can become polluted. When I coordinate trips with friends, we usually designate two leaders. One guy handles the travel/golf and the other guy handles all the food/entertainment. Having two leaders makes the planning process much simple and easier than trying to have 4+ people working on different aspects of the trip.
2) Book your golf last
If you are looking to save a few bucks on your spring break golf trip, booking your travel first is crucial. If you have flexibility on your destination and time of day/day of the week, this can really help you find the best travel deal. Using Kayak’s +/- 2 days tool can be really helpful to find the best day to travel. The good news is that if you are going to locations like Florida, the Carolinas, or Scottsdale for your trip, there are enough golf courses available to accommodate the needs of thousands of golfers.
It’s no secret, but flying mid-week and playing mid-week when courses and airlines are slower can help you save on costs. The cheapest days to travel are Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays according to this Farecompare article.
3) Find a facility with onsite lodging
Walking out your door for your 7am tee time is much nicer than waking up 30 minutes earlier and driving to a golf course far away. Most “golf resorts” which have on-site lodging will provide players with discounts to play the course outside of normal public rates and often times may provide “all you can play” deals or include special perks like a free breakfast. Finding golf courses that have timeshare business is often favorable since those golf courses are a bit slower and have more availability for play. We found some cheap golf packages at Barefoot Resort in Myrtle Beach.
4) Be careful about “other fees” when booking lodging
There are many golf resorts out there that advertise fantastic pricing to get you interested in their facility, but when you get on-site you find out about a $15 per person per day resort fee, cleaning fees, royalty fees, luxury taxes, and state/local taxes which could amount to an additional 20% increase on your travel costs. Take a look at the proposal I recently received from a resort in Florida. The $200 per night price tag per night for a villa looks great, but look at the true cost below!
Planning a golf trip is a lot of work. Hopefully the tips above help you while planning your next trip. If you are looking to take a spring break trip, take the easy road and let us do it for you! Nextgengolf is running two tournaments during spring break on March 4/5 in Panama City and March 11/12 in Myrtle Beach. Learn more about Spring Break Golf Trips here.
