Am I deluded or have holidays become almost unaffordable for many families?

[Tractorprincess]

Looking at holidays and everything is so expensive.

We usually pay around £1200 for a very very nice holiday flat in the UK right on the beach but we're all getting a bit bored of the same place. I always thought £1200 was quite pricey but I'm starting to think it's an absolute bargain.

I can remember going abroad a few years ago with ds1 for around 1k, now I can't find anything half decent for less than 3k.

Thought about doing a few UK weekend breaks but nice places for the dc, the Legoland hotel is £700! I know you can go to cheaper local ones but having done than previous years I was thinking about making it extra exciting.

Centreparcs is extortionate too.

Dh and I are both on ok salaries, hardly rich but above the apparent UK average.

I don't know how people afford to go unless they're very well off or go in term time.

You’re looking in the wrong places. Try camping lodges in the south of France and some of the more up and coming rather than established holiday destinations like Bulgaria

We’re heading to Spain in 3 weeks glamping for the grand sum of £350

Looking through some of the previous posts and I’m amazed to be honest. We’ve done a week near Paris with Disney land and all sorts for 600. Holland and Germany for around 500.

Even if you don’t like actual camping many campsites have glamping or camping cabin options that aren’t that much more expensive. For around 750 you could pay for a yelloh cabin in the south of France and ferry would be under 100 to get there. 🤷‍♀️

@Lifestyle that's not quite 5* AI and my DC would almost 2 weeks of term!!! Back to the search......

‘Back to the search’ Maybe next year look earlier yourself? I was trying
To be helpful but I won’t bother anymore. I spent a week looking at deals before settling, I booked 3 months ago when everything was first released, sorry I got a deal and you didn’t! I was looking at what was left, if you’re not happy to settle then that’s your issue.

Havent RTFT so apologies if it's been said a number of times, but holidays abroad are not necessarily better than those in the UK. Hotels not necessarily better than staying with friends/family.

I love exploring new parts of the UK and catching up with friends (only if they have DC the same age!). I enjoy being in a homely place and also enjoy hosting people to stay with us - London, so lots of people use us as a base.

Just don't think you're depriving children by not doing the standard sunny holiday abroad. Perhaps I'm biased as I was always taken abroad as a kid, and actually felt that those who stayed closer to home had a nicer time. It's all about who you're with and what you do that creates the memories, not the weather or the amount of time on a plane.

**
When I tell people I rarely, if ever, take a package holiday, they look at me like I'm from another planet. Yes, I book my own flights and transfers (which are usually a train or a bus). Yes, I book my own hotel separately. Why ?**

Havent RTFT so apologies if it's been said a number of times, but holidays abroad are not necessarily better than those in the UK. Hotels not necessarily better than staying with friends/family.

Totally different experience

Staying with family and friends can be lovely. But it’s not 5 star AI Caribbean holiday. As a single mum with two children 5&8, it’s sinply heavenly. I don’t need to think about food prep, shopping, laundry, activities, shit weather.

We wake up, breakfast, pool, beach, lunch, pool, beach, read, dinner, entertainment.

Pure bloody bliss with my children

Namechanged

Have you looked at Jet2holidays? Examples of 5* AI in August 2019 from £800 pp. You'll have to play with the search for your preferred airport and party size, but I'm sure you'll find something lovely for well under £1500 pp]].

@Findingmywayeveryday Too old for caravans? Mine all went eurocamp until they were 18 and even now they’d happily come with us if we paid. We still do self catering as a couple in France and love it.

We stay in Air BnB and hunt for cheap flights on Skyscanner. I agree prices have shot up, though.

I've found some online deals - flights included for a week in Bulgaria for £250pp, and some similar last minute deals in Turkey - typical resort hotels with pools - nothing fancy.

Kokeshi- staggered holidays can be a pain though especially now families are often spread throughout the country. Not all half terms and Easter's are the same as it is.
But I have friends who have children in schools in our city and they work in the neighbouring town just ten miles away. Different holidays. So they are struggling for holidays together and, if children are younger, childcare. Recent changes has made this far worse.

If you want to go away with family or friends in other counties it's a nightmare to organise.

Also GCSEs and A levels would have to change a lot. The final GCSE exam wasn't until the 21/22 June this year. Results day isn't until the end of August. So you can't have secondaries and sixth for. schools starting back until after those dates.

Loved that I was looking at the Borneo hotel on trip advisor and it flashed up “3 people are looking at this hotel”

It looks beautiful and absolutely up my street.

I am not in a couple and doing all the driving across France for 18 hours with my non air conditioned tiny car and teenagers sounds like hell to get there and then have to spend 1 or 2 weeks cleaning a caravan, cooking and doing the shopping I may as well stay at home and just take them on a day trip or 2 for less cost!

We go camping and even that is getting more and more expensive. £30+ a night to put our tent in a field and use the loo a few times?

Not unreasonable, completely true!

The good thing is though that for the super-rich whose kids are at £££££ fee paying schools, their summer holidays start earlier so that they can get low priced plane tickets and accommodation!

But surely it isn’t news to anybody that a “5 star AI Caribbean holiday” is expensive? It’s meant to be! There has never been a time when that sort of holiday has been within the budget of the average family. We have a good income (doctor and IT professional) but I wouldn’t even look at the Caribbean because it’s completely out of our price range. Moaning that you can’t afford it on a single teacher’s salary is ridiculous. Of course you can’t, you aren’t meant to.

I’m sure a Louis Vuitton suitcase is a lot nicer than a Samsonite one, and Rolls Royces are better than Kias. But they are luxuries, priced deliberately to exclude the riffraff average person.

I was thinking something like that Sashkin - some people claiming not to be able to afford to go abroad actually mean they can't afford a package to Disneyland Florida or All inclusive in the Caribbean.

Most of us can't afford that, but it doesn't mean we can't afford to go abroad.

Of course many people genuinely can't afford to go abroad, or on holiday at all. But others are just being deliberately helpless or hyperbolic because there's less sympathy for the truth which might be that they can afford to go abroad, but not in exactly the style they feel they should be able to.

But others are just being deliberately helpless or hyperbolic because there's less sympathy for the truth which might be that they can afford to go abroad, but not in exactly the style they feel they should be able to

Or they would be able to afford to go abroad if they spent a little less money on little day to day luxuries. People often comment on our multiple holidays a year (we usually go 3 times, all a week at a time, mid range B&B or SC, cheap times of year and I always get the cheapest flights I can find - we've had returns to the Canaries for £30 each for example).

But we spend very little on things like clothes, beauty treatments, haircuts, coffee and alcohol. Some people who 'can't understand why we can afford so many more holidays than them' are spending at least a fiver a day on lunch and coffee, are out shopping every week, always having their nails or hair done etc.

Some people can afford all the things they could ever want, some people can't even afford the basics, but the vast majority are somewhere in the middle and can afford the basics and some treats, so you have to priortise. Few people can afford to spend a lot on holidays and spend hundreds of pounds a month on day to day luxuries.

It might cost around a grand per person for flights, accomodation and food, drink and activities for a week in the sun (I know you can do it for less, but you can also spend a lot more) and that is a lot of money, but it also works out at less than a fiver per working day, so if you are one of those people who goes to the coffee shop every day, and always buys their lunch out, a holiday is probably affordable, you just have to look at the choices you are making.

We book flights months in advance and book own accommodation.Example Amsterdam £40 return flights for July. Cheapest bus was Megabus London to Glasgow £6.50 return ! Cheapest European holiday £150 each for a week in Majorca including flights off peak. There are bargain s out there, especially if you can be flexible with times and dates

I go on holiday but I try to make it something that I don’t have to get into debt over.

I can’t really afford a holiday I.e. school holiday prices, week in Spain because I am a single parent on a moderate income but I happen to live (and was born) in the SE, I have to run a car for my job etc etc. I have 2 children’s birthdays, my niece and nephew, Christmas, school uniforms.

If I cut down all the luxuries - which are way below most of what you mentioned I would still only have about £20 spare a month and frankly I would rather we all had new shoes, bedding or something nice for us all even very small because we have to live with those things all year - not just one week of the year.

It is not an excuse to find people don’t want to use credit cards to Pay for holidays and many of us do live within our means and that = no holidays.

To me, holidays are the ultimate luxury and getting my hair cut every few months is not. Buying work clothes out of Primark isn’t a luxury. Having an old iphone5 feels like a luxury to me to be fair but in reality it’s just what is within my means.

If I am going to go on holiday I refuse to live drastically frugally for an entire year for the opportunity to spend 1 or 2 weeks on a beach.

Pookie I know a lot of people genuinely can’t afford to go away. I’m just pointing out that there’s a big gap between “I can’t afford £5k for two weeks in a luxury villa” and “I can’t afford a week in a campsite in Brittany”, but it’s obvious from some of the comments on here that some people think the second one is somehow beneath them.

I know it seems ungrateful to turn your nose up at a Eurocamp style holiday but i look at them and think Jesus it just looks like a lot of hard work to get there and back, hours of driving, and self catering in itself is hard work. It wouldn’t be a holiday for me iyswim? So yes a real holiday to me would be something without the drudgery of normal every day life involved! Luxury! Instead i think a lot of people settle for something in the middle that does ok, is hard work and that can be frustrating

It's not beneath people - but i think it's just not seen as a relaxing holiday. We do Eurocamp and i genuinely like it. But it isn't much of a holiday. It's harder work than home. I have 2 days of batch cooking and shopping and packing up the car before we leave, then unpacking all the food and making up the beds when we get there. Then all the cooking and possibly sitting round in the rain and a crappy pool (which ds2 refuses to get in) for a week. All the driving. All the packing up again. 12 loads of washing when we get home.

When i grew up my parents attitude (and that of their friends) was very much a holiday is for the parents who work hard and the kids just fit in with them. But my attitude is that if the kids are miserable or not enjoying it then neither am I. At the moment that means long journeys, long flights, waiting at airports, 3am flights etc are out. Because it would be miserable for all of us.

Once they are older we'll definitely be more flexible and go further afield and off the beaten track a bit more. But for now Eurocamp is what we have. And the lasting memories of 7 of us in a boiling caravan in the south of France all with D&V for the week! We laugh now, but oh my god. It was horrendous.