Best Golf Cruises – A Guide to Golf Cruises Around the World

Why take a golf cruise? | A guide to golf cruises

Let’s say your travel partner wants to go on a Danube River Cruise again and you don’t want to revisit the Danube River excursions again, but you are an avid golfer. A golf cruise would be ideal for you. While your travel partner is wine tasting, you can head out to a championship course in Budapest.

You have a bucket list of courses that you want to play around the world. A golf cruise would be your chance to check off those lists. Again, these are not run-of-the-mill courses, these will be the top courses in Scotland, Asia, Europe and around the world. While you are playing golf, your travel partner can go see the sites. It’s a win-win situation for both parties.

What are the advantages of a golf cruise?

Traveling for golf has its challenges: golf club storage, finding a place to golf and securing a tee time and transfers to and from the course. The advantages of a golf cruise is they will take care of all this for you.

In addition to overcoming the challenges, an AmaWaterways and Azamara cruises, you will get you into a course that may be hard to get in to. These can be championship courses or even private and exclusive courses.

They offer golf excursions on other cruise lines, are they the same?

If they do offer golf excursions on other cruise lines, they will be one or two rounds on a 7-day cruise. What AmaWaterways and Azamara offers is 4-5 rounds of golf for a 7-to-10-day cruise.

Beware of other golf excursion experiences. Golfing in Alaska may not be the best conditions and the course in Alaska may not be the best kept as well as some of the courses in the Caribbean. They will not be championship-style courses, where they hold professional golf tournaments.

For cruises that offer one-off golf excursions, they will most often not store or let you bring clubs and it is not worth it to bring your clubs for one round of golf. They will most likely offer rental clubs. Both one-off and golf-specific cruises will offer rental clubs.

What level of golfer is a golf cruise for?

The courses offered for golf cruises can be challenging. However, I don’t want to deter a passionate golfer from not enjoying a golf cruise. It will be a lot of golf, 4 to 5 rounds of golf, meaning 4-5 days out of the 7-10 day cruise of golf.

Im not too concerned if you are a low handicapper golf. If you are a high handicapper golf, you will need to make it enjoyable for yourself, for instance:

• Play from the forward tees

• Limit your strokes per hole to the course policy (typically 8)

• Don’t spend too much time searching for your ball, drop if you need to

It’s about speed of play. Most importantly for high handicappers, just enjoy the beauty of the course as now you can say you have played on some of the most beautiful courses in the world.

Don’t worry about your score, have fun!

What can I expect to pay for a golf cruise?

In addition to the cost of the cruise. If you’ve cruised before, you know that the cruises lines will typically include an excursion per day and premium excursions will be extra. In this case, golf will be considered a premium excursion. Expect to pay between about $600 to $750 (USD)/round. With four rounds at $600 (USD)/round, expect an additional $2400 (USD) in addition to the cost of the cruise. It really is for serious golfers. If you are not a serious or avid golfer, the cost of golf in addition to the cruise may not be worth it.

What are the differences between AmaWaterways and Azamara?

The cruise experience is the same on AmaWaterways and Azamara. Both offer top quality services, food and amenities. Both will offer a golf concierge experience, which will handle tee times, golf club storage and transfers to the golf courses. The difference will be with Azamara, because it has partnered with PerryGolf. It will offer a small enhancement, such as a social event hosted by PerryGolf for its golfers.

During the The Open (British Open), the PerryGolf experience on Azamara can include 3 rounds of golf and attending the final two days of The Open.

At the moment, AmaWaterways only includes golf on the AmaMagna cruises along the Dunabe River, which only includes golf in select European countries.

Azamara with PerryGolf offers golf in Asia, Europe and Australia. It offers 70 different golf courses in 23 countries, where 20 are ranked among the World’s Top 100.

What is the availability of the golf cruises?

Yes, there is limited availability. The cabins available for golf cruising will be limited. If you want to experience golf in another country while cruising, plan ahead!

How do I book a golf cruise?

For AmaWaterays, you will need to book the AmaMagna – Danube River Cruise and golf will replace the excursions on the same day for guests participating in the Golf Program. Contact me to ensure you have the right cruise.

For Azamara, a travel advisor will help with checking availability of the golf spots and assist with booking the corresponding cruise including submitting the form for reserving a spot for golf.

If you are ready to book your golf cruise, need help deciding or need assistance checking availability, please reach out to me via the form below and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

This guide is part of our ongoing series on Cruise travel. Looking for more travel inspiration? Check out my guide, A Guide to Attending a La Liga Match in Spain.