Promotion Notions

Annual promotions like Can-Am Days, which offer steep discounts to international visitors, underscore how aggressively Myrtle Beach manages demand, using pricing to keep rooms and rounds filled across shoulder seasons.

That pricing strategy often shows up in how trips are packaged and sold. Tim Macdonell, CEO of Toronto-based Elite Sports Tours, a travel agency specializing in gameday experiences, said Myrtle Beach’s appeal to his largely Canadian clientele lies in the ability to blend spectating with playing. While you can’t watch the Knicks at Madison Square Garden and then run a pickup game there the next day, pro golf is unique in that fans can literally step into the experience. Catch a tournament round and then play that same course at a later date or step onto a nearby track of similar caliber the very next day.

“Myrtle Beach offers different levels of courses that can appeal to different skillsets of golfers,” Macdonell said.

The market’s range of courses and price points is a key draw for value-conscious travelers. “Canadians are particularly value-based travelers,” Macdonell added, noting that promotions that narrow the currency gap can materially influence booking decisions and help stabilize travel even as cross-border demand fluctuates. Even as trips to the U.S. dipped in 2025, he said sports-driven travel, especially that which is tied to golf, has remained more resilient, driven by the time-sensitive nature of live events and the continued post-pandemic surge in the sport’s participation.

Player Perks

The May 7–10 event features 120 players and a $4 million purse. Even the payout doubles as a marketing tool. Alongside the $720,000 winner’s check sits a $250,000 ONEflight flight credit, less a novelty than product placement wired directly into the top of the leaderboard.

Also all players who make the cut receive a five-hour flight credit. That’s the type of perk players notice. “That jet was awesome… I felt like I was in a movie,” Blades Brown said of using his ONEflight credits last year to travel between an event in the Bahamas to La Quinta, California. “I was, like, this is a $40 million jet. It was a little bit better than Southwest, I would say.”

If the tournament is the marketing, the area courses are the inventory—and Myrtle Beach has built one of the deepest public-golf portfolios in the U.S., spanning marquee designs, mid-tier volume plays and package-friendly tracks.

Myrtle Beach doesn’t just host a Tour stop—it packages a playable product at scale, with an extensive roster of courses feeding the same well-oiled tourism engine that Visit Myrtle Beach polishes this week. The Dunes Club provides the broadcast backdrop, but the real business is in the breadth of tee sheets up and down the lengthy swath of Carolina coastline.

Fairway Abundance

At the top end of the spectrum are venues like the host course itself, the Dunes Golf and Beach Club. The Robert Trent Jones Sr. stunner’s signature 13^th head-trip known as “Waterloo,” the culmination of the vaunted Alligator Alley stretch of holes. The intimidating par-5 features a sharp dogleg wrapping around a lake that flips conventional strategy on its head.

“You’re almost hitting away from the hole off the tee and then turning back across the water,” Australian pro Ryan Ruffels said. “The further you hit it, you can actually be getting farther from the green because the hole kind of turns back on itself.” It’s a design quirk that had legendary sportswriter Dan Jenkins quip, “the only way to reach the green is to charter a boat.”

Other top of the marquee names include Caledonia Golf & Fish Club, the studio art major turned golf course architect legend Mike Strantz’s debut solo design that trades oceanfront exposure for a canopy for gracious live oaks and marsh carries. For sister course True Blue, just across the street, Stranz went bigger in scale and scope, the Willem de Kooning to Caledonia’s Claude Monet.

Then there is the upper tier where you have properties like TPC Myrtle Beach, part of the Tour’s branded course portfolio, and home to the annual Dustin Johnson World Junior and Barefoot Resort where they have courses by Tom Fazio, Greg Norman, Pete Dye and Davis Love III.

Then there’s the middle of the market, where scale really shows up. Favorites include Myrtle Beach National King’s North Golf Course, where water hazards feel ever-present and No. 6, "The Gambler" tempts golfers with a high-risk island fairway shortcut to the green and a safer rout that still requires its own needle threading to pull off. Then there’s Man O’ War plotted alongside a 100-acre lake with back-to-back island greens on holes 14 and 15.

Meanwhile at the entry level, a deep bench of value-driven courses keep tee sheets full. The broadcast sells the destination, but the real business begins when viewers book their next trip.