Starting a mini golf business can be much simpler and less expensive than many people assume.
You don’t necessarily need a huge property, an elaborate theme or a multimillion-dollar adventure golf course. With good planning, an efficient layout and proper construction drawings, a smaller mini golf course can become a viable attraction for an independent business, hotel, campsite, resort, restaurant or family entertainment venue.
The key is to plan the business and the course together.
Here are the 20 steps I recommend taking before opening your mini golf course.
The first decision isn’t what obstacles to buy. It is what type of business you want to create.
Your main options include:
An existing hotel, campsite, restaurant, amusement venue or leisure business has an important advantage: it already has customers.
For these businesses, mini golf doesn’t necessarily have to support the entire operation by itself. It can increase visitor spending, extend the length of stay and provide an additional activity.
Who will actually play?
Potential customers include:
Your target customer influences everything from hole difficulty to theming, ticket price and opening hours.
A family course should not be designed in exactly the same way as an indoor entertainment venue aimed primarily at young adults.
Before investing money, investigate the area.
Look at:
Don’t research mini golf competitors alone.
A trampoline park, bowling centre, escape room, amusement park or children’s attraction may compete for exactly the same leisure spending.
Avoid starting with an optimistic revenue number.
Start with customers.
Estimate attendance separately for weekdays, weekends, holidays and different seasons.
Then create three scenarios:
Conservative – Expected – Optimistic
For example:
10,000 annual players × €8 average admission = €80,000
20,000 players × €8 = €160,000
30,000 players × €8 = €240,000
These aren’t promises of what a particular course will earn. They demonstrate why customer volume is one of the most important assumptions in your feasibility study.
Before building, determine approximately how many paying customers you need.
A useful simplified formula is:
Contribution per player = average revenue per player – variable cost per player
Then:
Break-even players = fixed costs ÷ contribution per player
Include rent or financing, wages, insurance, utilities, marketing, maintenance, taxes and other recurring expenses.
A course that looks profitable at 30,000 customers but loses money at 12,000 customers may be a considerably riskier investment than it initially appears.
There is no single correct amount of land for every mini golf course.
The requirement depends on:
A well-designed compact course can use land much more efficiently than a poorly planned course.
This is particularly important for small businesses where land is limited or expensive.
Eighteen holes remain the traditional format for a complete standalone mini golf experience.
But 9 holes can make excellent commercial sense when:
Don’t automatically build 18 holes simply because it is traditional.
Build the number of holes that makes sense for your site and business model.
There is a major cost difference between a relatively simple miniature golf course and heavily themed adventure golf.
A traditional course can use:
An adventure golf course might include:
Both can provide an enjoyable game.
The right choice depends on your market and investment budget.
Establish your budget before the final design.
Separate it into categories:
This makes it much easier to value-engineer the project without compromising the fundamental course.
Do this before committing to construction.
Requirements differ significantly between countries and municipalities.
Depending on the project, you may need approval relating to:
Speak to the relevant local authorities and qualified local professionals before construction.
You cannot properly design a site-specific course without understanding the property.
Record:
Even relatively small errors at this stage can become expensive during construction.
Now the actual mini golf design begins.
The layout needs to fit the individual holes together while providing good circulation.
A good layout considers:
Trying to fit as many holes as possible into the available land isn’t necessarily good design.
Efficient use of space is important, but the course still needs to feel comfortable.
Every hole needs a purpose.
Use combinations of:
Difficulty should vary throughout the course.
Avoid creating 18 variations of the same straight putt.
A good hole gives the player something to think about while still being understandable to someone playing mini golf for the first time.
You don’t need to make every hole expensive.
Instead, consider putting more visual impact into a few memorable locations.
A distinctive final hole, themed obstacle, bridge, sculpture or other feature can become something customers photograph and share.
The remaining holes can concentrate on good gameplay.
This can produce a much stronger course without dramatically increasing the construction budget.
This is one of the most important stages.
Don’t expect a general building contractor to invent the mini golf course while constructing it.
Your documentation should give contractors enough information to understand what they are supposed to build.
Depending on the project, this can include:
Good drawings allow ordinary local contractors to quote the work more accurately and reduce improvisation during construction.
Once you have proper plans, ask local contractors to price the project.
This is much more useful than asking:
“How much does a mini golf course cost?”
There is no meaningful universal answer.
Construction prices vary enormously according to country, labour rates, site conditions, course style, landscaping and theme.
Detailed plans let contractors price approximately the same scope of work, making quotations much easier to compare.
Although every project is different, construction commonly progresses through stages such as:
Setting out → earthworks → drainage → foundations/sub-base → hole construction → concrete work → utilities → obstacles → playing surfaces → paths → landscaping → signage → finishing
Drainage deserves particular attention on outdoor courses.
Beautiful artificial grass and expensive obstacles won’t compensate for a course that retains water after rain.
Construction completion doesn’t necessarily mean the course is ready.
Play every hole repeatedly.
Test:
Get children and inexperienced players to test it too.
A designer or experienced player may take a route through a hole that an ordinary customer never sees.
Admission doesn’t have to be your only income.
Consider:
This is particularly powerful when mini golf is part of an existing hotel, campsite, restaurant or entertainment business.
Your marketing should begin while the course is being built.
Show people the transformation:
Empty land → construction → first holes → obstacles → artificial grass → landscaping → completed course
This gives you months of content for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and your website.
Before opening, prepare:
And encourage reviews immediately after opening.
There is no reliable universal figure.
Two 18-hole courses can have dramatically different budgets.
A compact course built by local contractors using straightforward construction and prefabricated obstacles is fundamentally different from a heavily landscaped adventure golf course with waterfalls, artificial mountains and large themed structures.
Your biggest cost drivers are normally:
Land + site preparation + construction + theming + landscaping + buildings + infrastructure + labour.
This is why I recommend designing to a target budget instead of designing the dream course first and discovering afterwards that it cannot be afforded.
Yes — at least partly.
You don’t necessarily need a specialist mini golf construction company to perform every stage of the work.
Excavation, concrete, drainage, electrical work, landscaping and many other jobs can often be completed by competent local contractors.
The critical difference is having proper plans and specifications showing them what to build.
That’s where DIY construction can save considerable money without turning the project into guesswork.
In my experience, one of the biggest mistakes is starting construction too early.
An owner has land.
They know roughly where the holes should go.
A local builder is available.
So construction begins.
Then questions appear:
How wide should this hole be?
Where should the ball go?
What slope do we need?
Where does the water drain?
Will 18 holes actually fit?
Changing these things on paper is inexpensive.
Changing concrete after it has been built isn’t.
A successful mini golf course isn’t simply 9 or 18 putting greens placed on a property.
It is a small entertainment system.
The business model, customer flow, hole design, construction method, operating costs and marketing all need to work together.
You also don’t necessarily need the budget of a large adventure-golf developer.
With an efficient layout, proper construction plans and suitable local contractors, a small business can create a professional mini golf attraction at a much more manageable investment.
I am Stan Stoyanov, founder of Mini Golf Ltd – Bulgaria, and I have been designing and building miniature golf courses for approximately 20 years.
My work is particularly focused on projects that are often too small or budget-conscious for the large international mini golf construction companies.
I can help you with:
The objective is simple:
Give you enough professional information to build locally — without paying for an expensive international turnkey construction company.
If you already have a potential site, the best starting point is a site plan showing its dimensions.
From there, we can determine what type of mini golf course can realistically fit your property.