Where do people find these foreign holidays that are cheaper than staying in the UK?

[Donatella]

I haven't been abroad properly for years, apart from a self catering holiday in France a couple of years ago, and I would like to take my kids somewhere hot and sunny next year but I can't see how we can afford it. However, all I hear about is how expensive UK holidays are and how people could have a week all inclusive in the sun for the same price. So tell me, what websites should I be looking at to find this, and how do I avoid getting ripped off? For context, this year was our most expensive holiday for a while and we spent £750 on a Haven caravan for a week. Spending money on meals out and activities of about another £250, so the equivalent of £1000 for an all inclusive. Is that really possible in school holidays? Or should I resign myself to staying in the UK until the kids leave home 😭

I don’t think you can get a sun holiday for the same price as a Haven park, no.

But when people go to Center Parcs or drive hours to stay in a holiday-let somewhere extremely touristy, say Cornwall, in high season…then yes, you can get an all inclusive package, or cheap flights and a villa, for the same prices.

I'm not sure how you're only going to spend £250 at Haven though.

That's only £35 a day to cover all food and drink, activities, parking and travel there and back. A cheap meal like McDonalds or Wetherspoons would cost around that for a start and you need 2 other meals each day plus you'd want to go out and about a bit.

There's been a few threads recently where the cost for a family to an attraction has been £1-200 so you wouldn't be able to do any of that.

You'd be pretty much limited to cooking your own food most of the time and whatever free entertainment is provided on site. You probably even have to be careful with drinks and ice creams on site because I can't see them being cheap.

@TheRealKateAdie

I don’t think you can get a sun holiday for the same price as a Haven park, no.

But when people go to Center Parcs or drive hours to stay in a holiday-let somewhere extremely touristy, say Cornwall, in high season…then yes, you can get an all inclusive package, or cheap flights and a villa, for the same prices.

I've just linked to one...

When I compared I compared similar level hotels abroad, on same basis, with similar level hotels here.

So last summer me, dh and Dd went to France. We travelled by train and Eurostar to Paris. We stayed in hotels in good central locations in 4 or 5 locations using the trains to travel and a two day car hire, ate out each day.

This year, dh and I are going to Cornwall, driving. We are staying in hotels on the way there and back, plus 3 locations in Cornwall and `Devon. We will eat out daily, at the hotel or elsewhere.

The accommodation cost is dearer here and tbh not all of it is as good a standard simply as the choice was greatly reduced. Demand is far outstripping supply, so even booking several months ago there wasn't as much choice.

The accommodation for 3 adults in France was £1900 for 14 nights.
The accommodation for 2 adults in England this summer is £2840 for 14 nights.

The travel costs will be cheaper. The trains cost for 3 people last summer in France about £1200 (so £800 for 2 plus £200 car hire)
Our car is electric so fuel costs will be cheaper this summer but I do need to add parking costs on. I'm not yet sure what these will be. Plus any taxi costs if we go out at night as the accommodation isn't as centrally placed - again due to lack of choice remaining.

So France: £2900 for accommodation and travel for 2 (would have realistically been less as some accommodation was 2/bigger but I've left full cost for ease)

And England: £2840 before I add travel/parking on top.

Food and drinks will likely be similar costs per person.

Not sure about entertainment - some of the potential days out are fairly pricey but we may/may not go depending on how busy it is.

Including accommodation, travel, theme park and vineyard/caves and other entertainment our total cost of holiday (minus food/drinks) last summer cost us just over £1300 per person.

Similarly, Dd has recently been to Portugal for a few days to visit a friend. Flights were less than £50 return. Even with the tests she needed to pay for her travel costs were a fair bit cheaper than my flights to Scotland at the same time. Her hotel was a lot dearer per room per night as well.

Eurotunnel to France (you can use Tesco Clubcard vouchers towards the cost!) then a gite somewhere - can often get one for £500/week if you’re not in an obvious touristy destination. Drive to the South and you can find some bargains if you hunt!

If comparing to a caravan holiday in England it would be fairer to compare it to a similar level caravan type holiday abroad too - with similar facilities, similar kind of location. And don't forget to add travel costs of both holidays.

And then also compare the most likely weather as this often impacts spending money.

We go self catering in Spain, I book the flights as soon as easy jet release them, so it's about £800 for 4 adults. And book a 2 bed apartment with pool within walking distance of a beach, shops and restaurants. Eating and drinking is cheap and we'll eat lunch on the balcony. Entertainment, we're quite happy playing cards in the evening after a wander around people watching.
Accommodation is usually £500/week.
Next year, we are not too restricted by the holidays as I work in a private school so we'll go in July. Both sons (if they want to come) will be at university by then

Depends always what you want.

We originally booked 2 weeks Marjorca, 4*AI, one bedroom apartment for £4,000 plus flight and rental car.

That was swapped with 2 weeks Chester and North Wales, £3,500 for sc cottage.

You may get cheaper deals in May or October half term but so far we always had a day or two of bad weather, fine for us as we often do sight seeing, bad if you plan on a 7 day beach and pool time only.

But, I am a comfort creature, I want at least what I have at home unless I just stay a night or two and DD is too old to share a room with, most hotels won’t price a 14/15 year old for a 3rd bed anyway.

A caravan or camping or budget hotel abroad is my idea of hell regardless where.

Every time we have gone abroad it has cost us £££. So much cheaper staying in the U.K.

I don’t know how people get a holiday for a family of 5 abroad, flights, accommodation, airport parking, transfers etc for £1000 all in!

As a contrast, we've just spent £750 for 4 days in Cornwall visiting my son. It was a one bed Airbnb apartment

@derekthe1adyhamster

We go self catering in Spain, I book the flights as soon as easy jet release them, so it's about £800 for 4 adults. And book a 2 bed apartment with pool within walking distance of a beach, shops and restaurants. Eating and drinking is cheap and we'll eat lunch on the balcony. Entertainment, we're quite happy playing cards in the evening after a wander around people watching. Accommodation is usually £500/week. Next year, we are not too restricted by the holidays as I work in a private school so we'll go in July. Both sons (if they want to come) will be at university by then

£500 a week accommodation in Spain for 4 adults? I’d honestly love to know where you’re staying! 😃

Not in the school holidays?

I had this conversation with Dh yesterday. He reckons he could get a holiday cheaper abroad Than the haven we are going to next week,. Unfortunately he is forgetting we have 3 dc so are limited when we can go away - when we used to get cheap holidays, it was for 2 of us in term time when prices are cheaper. A hotel for 5 in any country is going to be expensive, but add in travel to Greece or similar, it adds up quite quickly.

For us, the way Greece becomes cheaper is because the Dc are happy to mess about in the pool or on the beach all day, so we don’t have to pay anything out to entertain them, for a weeks holiday, we would probably have one trip out on a boat or similar and maybe a bus ride in to the nearest big town/island capital or similar for a look round and a meal. In this country, it’s very rare to be able to spend the day by the pool/on the beach all day as the weather is generally naff, so we end up having to spend out £££ on day trips and other activities to keep everyone entertained. It seems I can only book 8 swimming slots at haven next week (there’s 5 of us, so that’s all of us once, and three of us the next time). In the past, we’ve been in most days for a free thing to do. Everything else has a charge attached.

Self catering is easier abroad now. It used to be dead expensive but with the availability of Aldi and Lidl you can eat in much cheaper than here

www.holidaylettings.co.uk/rentals/los-alcazares/6696620
It's £521 for a week starting Monday 25/7 (I think - just after the schools break up anyway) we found cheap flights from Bournemouth of all places! It was even cheaper when you factored in a one night stay in a travel lodge compared to flights from Gatwick!

Agree it’s soo much cheaper in the UK, we go to Yorkshire/ Scotland/ Wales in the summer - £700-£850 for a really nice cottage. Near lovely beaches, parks, walks and cycle trails. Use NT and English Heritage membership for cheap days out. Have lots of picnics and a couple of meals out - rarely spend much over £1000. Depends on the type of holiday you like though. We prefer the comfort, freedom and privacy of self catering and hate hot weather so it suits us.

[quote littletinyboxes]@fantastaballs Not wanting to derail the thread, but how did you find Tunisia with children? I've heard people complaining that there's lots of hassle when you leave the hotel etc- what did you find?[/quote]
The first time my eldest was 13/14. Very very pale skinned and waist length blonde hair and huge dark blue eyes. She's gorgeous. I won't lie, when we went into the markets that were more "locals" then she got some attention that made her feel uncomfortable. My brother in law physically pushed a man away from her at one point as he tried to touch her hair. But we have been back 3 times since and since she's learned to make direct eye contact and state them down she's never had a single issue. But that's not to say I would ever let her or her sister out of the complex unaccompanied. Infancy, she ran out of tampons and I ended up spending £20 in taxis to take us both to a chemist as no way was she going alive even at 21!! The staff across the hotels are wonderful though. Yes it's a novelty for them to see very pale skinned blonde women but they treated us very respectfully. Her nickname was "milky white, like the cheese" 😂

If you’re happy to do like for like, or even similar then you could try eurocamp or keycamp or canvas. I’ve just priced up flights and 7 nights in a self catering mobile home on a campsite in Rome for two adults and it came out to £380. Cheaper than we’d get in a self catering in the uk this year. But I wouldn’t think we’d find all inclusive that cheap!

@Donatella - people are comparing holidays in the UK this year with overseas holidays, not the normal UK prices.

Last week we should have been abroad on a holiday rescheduled from last summer that has now been moved to 2022. As DH had the time off already, I was looking for UK breaks, many 2 bed cottages and apartments in tourist locations were asking for nearly £2k for a week. (We ended up glamping and that was over a grand.)

Last week, we could have got a self-catering apartment, flights and transfers to Majorca for all 4 of us for around £1,600 with TUI. (Would need to hire a car there and pay for testing, but it would have ended up being about the same).

Try holiday pirates website and teletext holidays...thing is OP you are looking at school holidays here and also think your children will be classed as adults too so not easy,I dont know what age children stop being children for holiday purposes. Maybe if you book well in advance you might drop on lucky,

I live in Spain and we recently went to a 2 bed airbnb apartment 10 minutes walk from the beach and in a quiet development with 2 pools for under €500 for a week. But that was quite cheap for end of June, beginning of July and took a good bit of searching to find.

If you can be arsed, use Expedia and build your own package. We don't do all inclusive as we like to do a mix of dine in, eat out and pick up stuff from the supermarket.

We look at where we can get flights to for £100pp max (often cheaper) then look for the cheapest hotels/apartments with reasonable reviews (Read the actual reviews don't just go on ratings).

Depends how you look at it. My grandparents used to spend a month at a time in Benidorm in the winter.
They didn't have expensive tastes so just ate hotel food and enjoyed bingo with the other OAPs. They enjoyed the gossip and warm days that didn't aggravate their arthritis.
They didn't have to cook or clean or drive. It was cheaper for them to not be at home heating their house which was in the coast buffeted by north easterly winds.

I've been to that hotel in Tunisia. I am female, blonde. I had no problems even in the Souk although i should say I was with DP and do have a dont fuck with me demeanour.