During a trip to Southern California several years ago, we stopped at Pauma Valley Country Club for a delicious lunch. The course and surrounding views were beautiful so we took the photos you can see here.

It’s a country club so you can just play the course without knowing a member. But Pauma Valley also markets itself as “the perfect place to host your next business meeting, board retreat, birthday party, engagement celebration.” It’s also used as a wedding destination that “offers you a private and pristine location and impressive views.”

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Peter Finch offers up his list of the top ten courses you have to play, so if you’re planning a new golf vacation, check this out for some tips!

The Old Course in St. Andrews is the oldest and most iconic golf course in the world, and most golf fans would put this course near the top of their list. Check out this video to get an idea of what it would be like to golf this course on a vacation.

Taken a tour of Merion Golf Club in the video above, and you can get a hole-by-hole look at the golf course here.

It’s that time of year. The leaves are changing and the weather is definitely turning up north, and all the golf fanatics are trying to get in their final rounds of the year. It’s a frustrating time for golf fanatics, but for owners of golf courses and resorts in warmer climate areas, this is the calm before the storm. Golf travel season is about to kick into gear, and if you own a course you want to make sure you grab as much of that business as possible.

One thing to consider is online advertising. Most people research vacations now online, and you have to have a great website and be registered in the search engines. Once you have that, you can buy targeted ads on Google and Bing to drive traffic to your site of guys looking to book golf vacations. This can be a very effective tool. Social media can also help, especially if happy customers are encouraged to follow your page on Facebook. They’ll post pictures with links to your page, and then as you post stuff it shows up in their timeline. All of this makes it easier for them to share information and photos about your course with their friends, who then can also become customers.

It’s important to get impulse customers as well who check into nearby hotels, so you have to have good brochures that are placed in spots where tourists can find them.

So be prepared and make the most of this upcoming vacation season.