Go Golfing and Earn Enough Miles Back to Make it Effectively Free

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Golf Miles gives you miles for scheduling golf games.

Through September 1st they have a limited time bonus of 3000 American miles on first purchase of a tee time that costs at least $30.

  • The landing page only shows 2500 points
  • This is another blogger’s referral link. I do not receive anything for this.
  • Nonetheless, I have confirmed with Golf Miles that you’ll get 3000 American Airlines bonus miles if you choose to earn with American.
  • The 2500 point offer will be available through September 10, so after September 1 choose another partner if you wish.

So a $30 tee time nets a 3000 mile bonus… plus the usual miles for the game.. and golf.

You can also earn with Etihad, Frontier, Hawaiian Airlines, Icelandair, JetBlue, Southwest, United, or Virgin America (as well as non-travel programs).

It does look like you’ll often do better earning a gift card than miles, they must be buying miles at a fairly high price from the airlines.

..But with a first time use bonus it strikes me that the first round of golf would be pretty much free. If you don’t book in the window for this promo, the usual first time bonus is 1500 miles. So probably not worth going golfing just for the incremental bonus although 1500 extra miles is nice.

It’s an interesting model, as there are no doubt excess tee times that clubs don’t want to discount (since they want to maintain full price for the times they can sell, and they don’t want to cheapen their reputation) but can still spend money marketing (in the form of rebated miles and gift cards).

Of course instead of rebates that make your golf effectively free and just the first time, the Citi Prestige card actually comes with golf as a benefit.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Appears to be Golf Now hot deals only. Same Price and fees. Much better than booking on Golf Now and the only times you should be booking on GolfNow are hot deals anyways since course websites are usually the same price or cheaper with no fees on non hot deal times.

  2. I’ve used golfmiles for the past 6 weeks, with limited success. Signed up under pointscentric’s link, so my first round should have netted 2600 AA miles (2500 bonus + 100 for the round). I only got 1500 miles. My golf miles account shows another 1100 AA miles pending (from a round in early July); those have not made it to my AAdvantage account. I did get 250 miles as a goodwill gesture when I emailed customer service. After the initial bonuses, the earning is better for gift cards, but I haven’t gotten any of the gift cards I selected yet (though most of those rounds have been in the last 4 weeks). So, the technical kinks are not worked out on this site. It is a better deal than golf now (and courses have always honored the online rates, usually a few bucks cheaper than their regular rates).

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