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.

Confused - if you have a cleaner twice a week you may not be who this thread is aimed at. Those who cant afford a holiday!

We have tended to go abroad to Spain and Portugal in Oct. half term and used travel republic and the likes with cheap flights. In the summer we have gone to places like Centre Parks in Europe, loads cheaper than in the UK. We have also gone to the Duirnell Holiday park near the Hague in Holland which is great for all ages of children and teens.
We also have an older touring caravan we use in the UK and abroad.

Where do people get the idea that as a family you are all stuck in one tiny room in a hotel? The last few holidays we've had were 1 bed apartments so dd slept in the bedroom and DP and I were in the main room. She went to bed and we could spend the rest of the evening in our room/balcony watching films and drinking etc. In some hotels you can even have a villa and be able to use the hotel's facilities.

(I'm waiting for someone to say that they wouldn't be caught dead in an AI because they want to be free to explore and not chained to a hotel.........)

We have one weeks holiday a year. In the UK. £600 for self catering accommodation (school holidays) and £400 spending money. All we can afford.

Homestly I think most of you are insane - you would all rather have no holiday at all than one where you need to lower your expectations?

Yeah

I would rather save until I could afford the holiday I want, otherwise it really wouldn't be a holiday to me.

Luckily I can afford nice holidays, but in the past we had an overseas holiday every two years so it was of a good standard where everyone, including me, could just relax. We booked SC apartments so we had the space, but ate out breakfast lunch and dinner. Lovely!

To me it's like saying you have a choice between having loads of cheap clothes, or just a few pieces of expensive clothing. Or one really expensive bottle of wine or 5 bottles of plonk. We are all different and would all make different choices in that scenario, nobody is necessarily right or wrong, just different.

Same with holidays.

It is not lowering your expectations it is having a different viewpoint. It is not snobbery to say I don’t want to drive all that way, I don’t want to spend all day getting splashed by a million kids, I don’t want to play bingo in evening entertainment and I don’t want to do any cooking. If you do love long journeys, cooking and spending all day in the pool with your kids knock yourself out, my ideal holiday would be a 4 day trip to Rome sightseeing which would be other people’s idea of hell with their own children. I do also think many parents like myself hit a point where holiday camps have been overdone and everyone needs a different scene, i would rather stay at home than go camping or a holiday camp and keep saving up for my trip to Rome

confussed I love lounging by the pool holidays and eating in restaurants but my 3 year old and 20 month old def don't like those things. I still want to have a break from everyday life and sc in Euro camp is ideal. Throw everything in the car , we bbq, get takeaway from the restaurant, have good cheeses and fresh bread etc. My kids would get bored in a hotel pool. We all have great fun . It isn't particularly relaxing but it is lots and lots of fun.

We had some nice trips to Brittany on the ferry - Plymouth Roscoff hiring a Gite - Gites de France - en.gites-de-france.com/holiday-rentals-Brittany.html Some of those rents seem still be quite reasonable eg 390 euros a week.

@sunsandandwateralides why would your dc get bored at a hotel pool but not euro camp, I don't understand? The eurocamps I've looked at have pools that look extremely similar to hotel pools?

My 3 year old isn't a fan of restaurants which is why we go AI at the moment. She doesn't get time to get bored as she's eating within 5 mins and we tend to be out within 30 mins. I appreciate that isn't everyone's kind of fun but it's preferable to me than eating baguettes, ham and cheese because that's what we eat for lunch pretty much everyday

Im in the middle of a 5 day trip to butlins for £380 including the top tier dining.

Totally with you there Confussed.

Not that I ever really go on holiday as DH and I are from differnt countries so we just go to visit family as and when we can afford it.

I think it depends on what stage of life you're at, and what you don't mind doing based on your every day home life. We're into the teenage years now with children and have done quite a lot of the Eurocamp / camping in a tent / self catering holidays with little ones which was great.

Now however, I don't want to do that. 50 weeks a year, I get up thinking about sandwiches for packed lunches, whether I need to get anything out of the freezer for dinner, generally do all the mental prep, then the physical prep, and tidying up afterwards for a family of 5. I loathe it but appreciate it's part and parcel of family life (my H pulls his weight in other ways). My "holiday" is NOT doing that for 14 days (actually we're only going for 10 days thus summer because 14 days was too expensive but I'd rather go for 10 in a hotel than 14 days SC!)

My 3 year old isn't a fan of restaurants which is why we go AI at the moment. She doesn't get time to get bored as she's eating within 5 mins and we tend to be out within 30 mins. I appreciate that isn't everyone's kind of fun but it's preferable to me than eating baguettes, ham and cheese because that's what we eat for lunch pretty much everyday

Totally agree with this. We like to eat hot food prepared by someone else,but going to a restaurant with 3 under 5 is a miserable experience because by the time we've ordered (often in some countries the service is much more laid back which we loved pre-dc but is now buttock clenching) and the food has arrived it can be 30-45mins and mine have used up all their good behaviour by then and are bored shitless. A hot buffet ready when we walk in sounds like bliss.

Does anyone else with more than one dc struggle finding things they all like at the same time? DS1, me and dd love swimming but ds2 and dh hate it. DS1 and 2 hate walking but DH and i love it. Ds2 hates sight seeing but the rest of us love it. DS1 and dh love skiing but ds2 hates it. None of the kids like pizza but me and Dh like it...It seems that no matter what we do someone (usually ds2) is moaning like a drain or having a full meltdown (ds1). I cant think of one thing we could all do that someone isn't moaning about.

Sorry to hijack OP - But i was just wondering about the Eurostar. Has anyone done that with kids? Is that cheaper/easier?

Mine loved the euorstar at 7 and 4 :)

morrisdancing because at Euro camp it isn't just a swimming pool. There are outdoor water slides, indoor water slides, indoor splash and outdoor splash. The indoor pool had multiple jacuzzi areas and ther water features. It provides more entertainment than a regular hotel pool. Having looked on line, hotels with that sort of set up are incredibly expensive. When they are too old for Euro camp we will do the hotel relaxing holidays but first and foremost I do want my kids to have wonderful memories. Plus , if I am going to spend all
Day in the pool with a toddler, you better believe I also want to have a bit of fun!

Wow all those pools sound ace. Mine would like that. Where's that?

We booked flights to Croatia fir five people with easyJet for £320. This was booked just before Christmas. We are staying in Air B&Bs.

It’s ptobably around £2000 but of course we still have to pay for food etc

Holidays are not cheap. Even ‘cheap’ ones.

@sunsandandwaterslides the last couple of hotels we've stayed at have had watermarks but not indoor ones which would be useful in april/may/June - any recommendations for eurocamps??

On the cost front, we looked last year at staying at eurocamps in the south of France for this September but once we added costs of flights and car hire (no way can I face driving to South of France with my 3 year old - a short flight is definitely preferable!!) an AI in the med worked out better value. Our last two AI have cost around £1,200 for the three of us (we've spent a bit more this year as DD is older and we're travelling a little earlier than normal).

The ferry Plymouth to Roscoff was pretty nice actually and Brittany is lovely. The Gites were in remote bits of the countryside on farms so a really genuine part of the French life. Despite it being in a phase when we were short of money I and the children still remember the holidays fondly. the children could even see the farm animals and we had bedrooms more than enough and self catered - the bread is cheap and nice and we don't like eating out too much anyway and certainly didn't with 3 very little children. I have also been on much more expensive holidays. You just have to pick what works for you and your budget if you are lucky enough to afford any holiday at all.

Thanks for the detail about the resort,sun. I do like things to be clean!

scared it is called le littoral and it is in the south vendee.

Homestly I think most of you are insane - you would all rather have no holiday at all than one where you need to lower your expectations?

That’s not insane, it’s a perfectly sensible choice.

I won’t leave my, (nice - not fancy, but very nice to me), house for something a lot less comfortable, unless it’s something we all really want to do.

We’re currently having a “holiday” in our house and doing local stuff. We were meant to be in a holiday park, caravan type holiday in the UK, but we got there on Sunday, took a brief look at the accommodation (grim), asked if we could pay to upgrade (nope) and then packed our bags back up and drove home. We managed to get a refund as a very kind, goodwill gesture from the holiday park. We would have left anyway and forfeited the money though as it was not nice at all.

I’ve learnt my lesson now. If it’s no more interesting and a lot less comfortable than home then I’m not booking it.