To be shocked at the cost of holidays?

I'm not surprised at all by that price. I'm paying £200 a month for a year for 1 weeks holiday for an adult and 1 child . This is how much it costs now.

YANBU it’s madness

Yep it is crazy! Even the ferry cost us a grand last year.

With a family of five it's going to be considerably more than with four sadly.

We love a camping holiday, especially when the kids are smaller.

When they are older and can appreciate abroad more, in terms of culture and sightseeing, we will save and go abroad.

One way to do it if you’re quite flexible is to just look for wherever has cheap flights and then get an Airbnb nearby. We tend to do that for way under 4K. Guess it depends what kind of holiday you like though. Hotel discos and entertainment are my worst nightmare.

If you or your partner are teachers (just wondering as you said the joys of teaching) do either of you have a blue light card. They do some great offers with eurocamp. We've taken advantage a couple of times and had amazing trips away including Barcelona, France and Italy.

We go away every sumner for 10-14 days. We are also a family of five but we never spend 6k on our summer holiday. Usually around 3k. Eurocamp or apartments close to a beach with a shared pool.

We used canvas holidays (static caravan with air con and a complex with pools and flumes) when dc were little. You can put dc to bed and sit on the veranda with wine and have a truly relaxing holiday.

now my dc are teens we do the all inclusive thing because dc can be independent and it just works for us all. Magic life in fuerteventura with Tui was fantastic for food etc but on the cheaper end of the scale. Greece next summer is £7k for a week for all 5 of us (probably last holiday with all 3 dc as dd is 17).

My DC are now adults but when they were young we had a lot of cheap camping holidays, both in this country and abroad.

We used to drive to France which kept costs down (channel tunnel crossing was paid for with Tesco Clubcard points, don't know if they still offer that?).

First mistake is august. We never go abroad then. Far too expensive. Go in whit or Easter or October holidays. Much cheaper.
Book separates rather than a package and utilise inset days where possible or come back or leave a day or 2 before the holidays start/end.
See if your holiday dates differ from other regions. Our Easter dates are a week earlier than most other areas this year and our October dates were a week behind most of the country last year. Makes holidays cheaper that way. There are plenty of deals to be had.
If it HAS to be august then look at eurocamp or similar

I’m surprised at your findings, I just did a quick search and found lots of nice one week holidays in the six week school holidays with breakfast and dinner for around 2k for one week for a family of 5.

Are you looking at tui and jet2? If so then sack them off theyre far too pricy. I have never spent that much on a holiday.

this year, 4 adults in two rooms all inclusive in Crete for the first week of September £2500.

when the DC were a lot younger we did Corsica for under £1000 including car hire. If you’re not massively fussy about hotel rooms and happy to put up with clean and functional but not fancy then you can definitely have a lovely holiday for a lot less.

As someone suggested Key camps is great with a ferry across the channel.
Centre Parcs in Holland is also way cheaper than here so that’s also worth looking at.

Holidays are expensive but we prioritise them, I’m also pretty good at getting a good deal but this year they’re pretty pricey.

Its always expensive to go away in the school holidays. I say this as someone who was a single parent with 3 children in 2004. We had to settle for UK self catering holidays for the best part of 10/15 years - going abroad was not an option and I was a high earner at the time.

Another fan of Eurocamp here, lots of fun and won’t break the bank.

Eurocamp or Pierre et vacances are more affordable, you can also sometimes get a better deal by booking flights and accommodation separately finally we always drove, west coast of France isn’t so far, good holiday parks, for Spain there’s the long ferry to Santander though I drive through France usually and I also did northern Italy by car

Holiday prices have gone up massively since Covid.

I went to Greece in 2019 and really liked the place so looked at booking to go back. The price has more than doubled in 6 years! And I went in the school holidays back then, now I’m looking at mid June - I date not even look
at what it would cost in August.

Agree going in Spring or Oct HT cheaper. Or an apartment rather than hotel.

That is what it costs though. People prioritise different things. I drive a twelve year old small car, and my house hasn’t been decorated or had any real upkeep for seven years. We never have takeaways and I don’t drink alcohol.

I spend about £10k on holidays each year.

Or they don't have three kids? We have one, and go away every summer and usually something in the other school holidays too

We used this company for the netherlands
https://www.roompot.nl/
and also centre park type places in Germany were cheaper than the uk.