Golf has never been more popular in the United States. The industry has seen nine straight years with more than 2 million beginner golfers, in the last three years that number has been over 3 million. In 2022 the sport had a direct economic impact of $102 billion in the United States alone, a 20% increase since just 2016. And it doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon with over 3.4 million junior golfers, the highest level in the US since 2006.
The golf travel industry is exploding as well with the market being valued at over $20 billion! The National Golf Foundation found through a recent survey that “Roughly 80% of Core golfers suggest they have plans to take a golf-specific trip in 2022, up from two-thirds a year ago. Data from U.S. golf resorts validates this finding – 75 facilities reported to us that advanced bookings are up, on average, about 12% over the same period last year and almost 20% over pre-pandemic.”
This is all great news for the game, but it does have its costs. And those costs are in golfers’ wallets. We went through Golfbreaks, the worldwide leader in golf vacations, top 20 United States 3-night / 3-round vacation packages. These packages include a hotel stay and tee times and that’s all. Yet the packages averaged a whopping $1,612.30 in peak season for the entire 3 days, just under $538 per day. Now, some money can be saved by playing in off-peak seasons but the average 3-day cost was still $958.20, just under $320 a day.
Points to Birdies is dedicated to helping all golfers make their dream golf trip a reality. By providing some of the best travel and finance tips. And also helping by inspiring amazing golf trips you can take across the US and around the globe. Below you’ll find a brief overview of what award travel is. As well as links to some of our top articles where you can find more award travel tips and articles on our favorite golf trips.
So what is Award Travel anyway?
Award Travel in its simplest form is signing up for travel credit cards and collecting credit card points, airline miles, or hotel points that you can use to cash in on free flights, hotel stays, and much more. One of the best ways to accumulate points/miles is by taking advantage of credit card welcome bonuses to fast-track award flights and stays.
Award Travel does require lots of careful planning, but will break it down into a few simple steps to help get you on your way to turning Points to Birdies!
Step 0: Treat your Credit Cards like a Debit Card
Before you can even think about travel hacking it’s important to reiterate that this method isn’t for everyone. If you can’t pay off your credit bill each month due to spending too much in order to hit the required spend on a welcome bonus or carry a balance for whatever reason award travel has to wait!
While you can receive some amazing benefits from taking advantage of Credit Cards they can come back and hurt you in a flash. If you’re running a monthly balance you’ll be getting charged 20%+ in interest at a minimum and it will eviscerate any benefit you receive. The Credit Card Market is worth $14 Trillion for a reason and that’s because if you run a balance the Bank wins!
Before you sign up for a card please make sure you can hit the required spend on a welcome bonus with your normal monthly spending.
Step 1: What's your goal?
There are a ton of Travel Credit Cards out there. Before you get started it’s good to plan what you are earning points toward and where you want to use your points. For example, when I was first starting out over a decade ago I wanted to take a trip to Rome, Italy.
So, I signed up for a couple of Chase travel cards that some of my friends had with the plan of using the points I received from the welcome offers to book a flight. What I realized later was all the best routes from my city were Delta flights and Chase isn’t affiliated with Delta. If I had planned this out ahead of time I would have realized Amex is a transfer partner with Delta and I could have prioritized signing up for an American Express card instead.
Think about where you want to go well before you start focusing on how you’re earning points. Then, research the best rewards programs to get you there.
Step 2: Sign up for a Travel Credit Card
Once you have some goals in mind and know what’s important to you, you can start your search for a credit card. There is no perfect card — each has its pros and cons based on your goals. Most introductory cards are free but most of the best travel cards usually have an annual fee. These fees however can be greatly offset by the perks and points they provide. Below are some examples of the main things I look for in a good travel card:
- A huge welcome bonus: After you sign up and get approved, you can typically earn a welcome bonus of 50,000 or more points after completing a spending requirement over three or more months. Some of the top travel cards can offer upwards of 100,000 points for doing as much as signing up and putting your normal spending on the card.
- Low spending requirement: While those 100k plus welcome bonuses are great they can come with larger required spending amounts. I will typically sign up for cards with a minimum spending requirement of $3,000 USD in a three- to six-month period.
- Category spending bonuses: Most Credit Cards offer the basic one point for every dollar spent. Good travel cards though will offer extra points for spending in certain categories. Such as 3x on dining out or travel. These can be great ways to align your top spending categories with cards that give you better than 1x rewards.
- Special travel perks: A lot of travel cards will offer additional perks beyond points and miles. You can get cards with special elite statuses or flight/hotel credits.
- No Foreign Transaction Fees: If your planning on doing any travel outside the US a card with no foreign transaction fees is a must!
- Credit Card Application Rules: Some banks have strict application rules when applying for credit cards. For example, American Express limits welcome bonuses to one per lifetime. Meanwhile, Chase’s infamous 5/24 rule prevents you from being approved for a new card if you’ve had five or more in the last 24 months.
Step 3: Earning the Welcome Bonus
As mentioned, the most important part about signing up for a new credit card is to make sure you earn the welcome bonus (responsibly of course). Welcome Bonuses are the quickest way to build up a base of points. Lots of times these Welcome Bonuses can be enough to book multiple flights or multiple nights in a hotel.
Putting all your normal spending on your new card for the first few months is a great way to achieve this. Another great thing to do is if you know you have a big purchase coming up, if you can time it right by getting your new credit card beforehand you can be well on your way to securing a welcome bonus.
Or you can go with my favorite method! If you’re out to dinner with a group of friends, rather than splitting the check go ahead and put your card down and have everyone pay you back instead. That’s another easy way to meet the minimum spend without having to worry about getting over your skis!
Step 4: Maximize your spending
Once you have a few cards and have hit all your minimum spends for the welcome bonuses it’s important to figure out what cards earn the most for certain categories. Restaurants, supermarkets, travel, and gas are some of the most common ones, but there are lots more too.
If you just have one card to start, just put everything on that card to maximize your points. Once you start branching out and have a few cards, just keep track of the main category bonuses so you don’t miss out by using the wrong card. Earning double, triple, or even 10x the points can drastically speed up your earnings, so don’t skip out on the category bonuses!
Step 5: Redeem your hard-earned points!
It’s finally time to cash those points in and make your dream golf trip a reality!
