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Golf tourism is travel with golf as the anchor purchase: the trip exists because of the tee times, and the beds, meals and transport follow behind. It stretches from a two-night buddies’ break in the next county to a once-in-a-lifetime links tour booked from the other side of the world.
It is serious money for the venues on the receiving end. UK golfer spending includes about GBP 526m a year on green fees and GBP 484m on accommodation, according to Sheffield Hallam University research for The R&A, and a large slice of both lines is golfers playing away from home, as our UK golf spending breakdown shows.
This briefing explains golf tourism as a business: who travels, what they buy, and which operators end up holding the money. The aim is practical: to help venues decide where travelling golfers fit in their own mix.
What counts as golf tourism
The category is wider than the brochure image of transatlantic links pilgrimages. Golf tourism covers day trippers paying a green fee an hour from home, weekend groups combining two rounds with a hotel stay, societies on their annual tour, corporate retreats, and inbound international visitors building an entire holiday around famous courses.
The venue mix is just as broad. Championship links carry the bucket-list traffic, and our explainer on what makes a links course covers why that word sells so strongly abroad. Beneath them sit resort hotels with golf on site, clusters of well-priced members’ clubs that welcome visiting groups, and city venues that add a round to a conference trip. Events add a further layer, since spectators travelling to tournaments buy the same beds and dinners as playing visitors, without needing a tee time.
Who travels: the golf tourism customer
The classic golf tourist is a repeat customer travelling in a group. Buddy trips of four to a dozen friends organise themselves around one booker, who does the research, negotiates the rate and carries the group’s loyalty. Win the booker and the whole party returns.
Around that core sit societies on tour, couples adding golf to a wider break, corporate parties entertaining clients, and solo travellers ticking off famous venues. Inbound visitors from overseas concentrate on recognised names and links coastlines; they book further ahead, and they spend more per day than domestic groups. Lead times differ with distance too: local groups fill gaps at short notice, while inbound itineraries are often fixed the previous autumn, which affects how far ahead venues should release visitor slots.
What unites them is behaviour rather than demographics: golf tourists buy several rounds in one trip, they spend well beyond the course, and they choose destinations on reputation and word of mouth.
What golf tourists buy
The shopping basket starts with the tee time but rarely ends there. Green fees are the anchor, part of the GBP 526m UK golfers pay annually, and accommodation is the biggest companion purchase at GBP 484m, on the Sheffield Hallam figures for The R&A. Then come food and drink, buggy and trolley hire, caddies at the storied venues, and transport between courses.
Retail deserves its own line. Logo merchandise from a famous venue is the physical proof of the trip, which is why visiting golfers tend to outspend members in the shop, and why a healthy share of UK golfers’ GBP 1bn annual equipment and clothing spend lands at destination venues.
Packaging shapes the split. Independent travellers buy each item separately; packaged groups buy a bundle from a tour operator or a resort, trading a little price for certainty. For venues, packaged business books earlier and cancels less, while independent business pays more per round. Neither is better; a healthy visitor book usually mixes both, weighted by season.
Who earns from golf tourism
The money spreads well beyond the golf course. Venues collect green fees and visitor retail; hotels, guest houses and self-catering lets take the accommodation line; tour operators and booking platforms take a margin for assembling the package; and pubs, restaurants, taxi firms and hire-car desks catch the rest of the day’s spending.
Employment follows the same spread. Sheffield Hallam’s work for The R&A counts around 8,274 full-time-equivalent jobs in UK golf tourism, inside roughly 63,826 FTE jobs across golf as a whole, with the sport contributing around GBP 2.6bn in gross value added. In links towns, the golf calendar effectively is the tourist season. That spread is why local authorities and tourism bodies court golf: the spending lands in shops and restaurants that never see a fairway.
How venues win golf tourism business
Winning travelling golfers starts with the tee sheet. Visitor windows need protecting at the times tourists actually want, mornings for groups above all, and pricing needs to flex by season and day of week, the discipline covered in our guide to tee sheet yield management.
Beyond the sheet, the levers are practical: group-friendly catering and locker space, published rate cards that operators can sell from, partnerships with local hotels, and a reputation tended as carefully as the greens, because reviews and the booker’s word of mouth write next season’s diary.
Geography helps too. Golf tourism clusters, since travelling golfers want several courses within a short drive, and our count of how many golf courses the UK has shows why Britain’s density is a structural advantage. None of it requires a championship course; it requires being easy to book, easy to reach and worth talking about.
Frequently asked questions
How big is golf tourism in the UK?
There is no single official total, but the scale shows in the spending lines: UK golfers pay about GBP 526m a year in green fees and GBP 484m on accommodation, and golf tourism supports around 8,274 full-time-equivalent jobs, on Sheffield Hallam University research for The R&A.
What does a golf tour operator do?
It assembles the package: tee times, rooms, transfers and sometimes flights, sold as one price. Operators earn a margin for convenience and buying power, and venues gain earlier bookings and fuller midweek sheets.
Which parts of the UK attract golf tourism?
The links coastlines carry the international traffic, with Scotland the headline draw, while inland England, Wales and Northern Ireland trade strongly on value, course density and short travel times between rounds. Density matters as much as fame, because a trip is built from a cluster of courses, not a single venue.
Sources: Sheffield Hallam University for The R&A (2019 data); The R&A.
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