Budget vs Luxury Golf Holidays in Tenerife

"It's a bit Benidorm" is not something anyone has ever said about the south of Tenerife while standing on the fairway at Golf Costa Adeje with the Atlantic behind them.

Tenerife gets unfairly dismissed by golf travellers who lump it in with package holiday resorts. The south of the island is a genuinely good golf destination — reliable sunshine year-round, short flight from most UK airports, and a surprising spread of quality courses. The question is what you actually get at different price points.

Budget (under £800pp for 5 nights)

Perfectly achievable. Flights from most UK airports are cheap outside school holidays, and mid-range hotels in Los Cristianos or Playa de las Américas are solid without being exciting. Green fees at courses like Amarilla Golf or Golf del Sur are reasonable — you're playing decent, well-maintained layouts without paying resort prices. You'll eat well and cheaply in the local restaurants rather than the resort dining rooms, which is honestly often the better choice anyway. The golf won't blow your mind but it's good enough to justify the trip, and the weather in January or February when everywhere else is miserable makes the value obvious.

Luxury (£1,500pp+)

This is a different trip. Abama Resort sits on the west coast and is one of the more extraordinary hotel and golf experiences in Europe — Dave Thomas designed the course along a volcanic hillside, the holes descend toward the ocean, and the resort itself is the kind of place that makes you feel guilty about how good your life briefly is. Green fees match the setting. Paired with a night or two at a boutique hotel in the north of the island — where it's genuinely lush and green and completely unlike the south — and you have a trip that punches well above what Tenerife's reputation suggests.

The honest verdict

Tenerife budget trips are great value for winter golf. Tenerife luxury trips are genuinely surprising — Abama specifically is one of those places that converts people who thought they'd never go back. If the group budget is split — some want cheap, some want to splash out — a compromise at £1,000-1,200pp gets you good hotels in the south and green fees at the better courses. Nobody feels like they've been short-changed.