This may be the most beautiful golf hole on earth - but you have to go to Mexico to find it!
Quick, do a Google Search for “Mexico’s Best Golf Courses,” and in the Top 5 results you will see the special guest blog I did for the website of Delta Vacations.
I have long been a champion of golf in Mexico, which has among the highest average quality of courses of any country in the world, and my Delta blog is a handy quick and dirty overview of the best regions to go and the best courses in each. I’ve also covered Mexico a lot on my own blog, so to read more, click here, here, here or here.
But remember, whatever you do, if you got to Mexico, DO NOT BRING YOUR iPhone! This is going to be even worse if AT&T, who loves to screw its customers, succeeds in buying T Mobile.
Anyway, here’s why I did the guest appearance: Delta Vacations can be a pretty great deal for the traveling golfer. They are not alone. Other airline vacation sites, including Continental Vacations and United Vacations can help you get to the tee faster, cheaper and with more opportunities for free travel.
The layperson may not know this, but with few exceptions, the airlines typically do not run their own vacation sites, but rather sub them out to third party tour operators or large travel packagers. This gives the public the best of all worlds; access to below market plane fares coupled with a vast inventory of hotels, resorts and transportation providers, all offering the vacation operator low, negotiated bulk rates.
Think about this for a second: no matter how internet savvy you think you are, at the end of the day, does it make any sense for any hotel in the world to offer you a lower rate than the guy at Continental Vacations who is booking a hundred rooms with the same hotels, year in and year out. Nope.
Guess what? There's a lot to do off the course as well, like these Mayan ruins at Coba.
As an expert travel writer and very frequent traveler who almost always makes his own very detailed arrangements, for many years I was skeptical of “package” vacations. But last fall, I used Delta vacations for my trip to Munich’s 200th Oktoberfest, an awesome experience about which I have written several blogs, and posted lots of pictures. After having tried every possible alternative, the combination of the airfare, ground transfers and hotel was impossible to beat on my own, and unlike some consolidator and other below the radar fares, you not only get all your miles, you usually get bonus miles when booking with one of these airline vacation sites. As I have mentioned before, frequent flier miles are an increasingly valuable currency for the frequent or golf traveler, since if you can make “status” on an airline these days, it eliminates all the newfound charges for baggage, better seats and what not, which can really add up. Using an airline vacation site for your next trip won’t just save you money on the trip, it could help save you a hundred bucks or more on baggage fees on all your other trips going forward. And you could be that person sitting in the emergency row aisle seat who is already reading the paper when you finally get on and head to your crowded middle seat and fight for overhead space that is already taken.. Finally, this is not just true for the airline you frequent, but for all the airlines in its alliance, like Sky Team for Delta or Star Alliance for Continental. It just makes sense.
One more thing: if something goes wrong on the trip tor gets changed or I miss my flight, I want to be calling Delta Vacations to make the changes, not SomeGolfTrip.com.
In addition, these packages almost always include transfers, something a lot of people don’t think about. Flying into Cancun to play Mayakaoba? A cab is gong to cost you well over a hundred bucks roundtrip, but since you don’t pay till you get there, it is easy to not count that cost when comparing deals. Trust me, I’ve done the legwork and sites like Delta or Continental Vacations, which offers lots of golf packages here and abroad, might not have the best deal every single time, but they are definitely worth a look.
