To be shocked at the cost of holidays?

[Fourpawsblack]

We haven’t been able to go away for years (pre DC!) due to finances. A falling down house, part time work due to childcare and the cost of living has made for a rough time.

Just started to look at a week away for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 DC under 6) in Spain for August 2026…£4k was the cheapest I found and that was not a great hotel. It was more like £6k for somewhere with half decent reviews. AIBU to think this is crazy? Is this just what I am looking at?
It would mean saving at least £400 a month for a year to be able to do it which would be very rough.

How are almost all of the kids in my DC classes on holiday every year. Maybe I’m missing a trick. I feel sad for my DC that they should be able to experience going on holiday and can’t. I know it’s a first world problem.

Before anyone brings it up, there’s 0 way we can go at a time not in the school holidays so we are stuck with over inflated pricing. The joys of teaching.

There are usually plenty of reasonably priced chain hotels around the "portes", next to the Peripherique. Porte de la Villette is my favourite. Try zooming out on the booking.com map.

It can be extortionate! Do you have any grandparents that might go with you? If you book a child under them, you’d get an extra free child place.

That’s what we’ve done this year. We’re travelling with my brothers, wives, mum etc. There’s six adults, and three children (two of which are mine). So we booked it in a way that there’s a child under each two adults per room, so each child goes for free. It was still £2,800 for two adults though (for 10 days).

Last year, we did a basic hotel in Spain. For me and two DC, it cost me £1k in August holidays. I booked with a friend with her DC. 2 adults, 5 kids. We got given two free child spaces. So I had to pay for one adult and a child, and she had one adult and two children to pay for. Total bargain, I’m still convinced to this day it was an error on the website.

There’s pros and cons to booking in advance and paying off monthly, and saving up monthly and booking nearer the time.

For example, a completely random search just now, but for this Saturday to fly out for Easter holidays, I’ve found a self catering hotel for a week, including flights and transfers, £352pp, for a family of 5, that’s £1756.

When we did a basic hotel last year, I took insulated water bottles and bought large bottled water from the shop for the fridge in the room, and took squirty juices along with us so I wasn’t buying drinks all day long. For breakfasts, I’d get a loaf of bread from the shop and eggs and make scrambled egg on toast. I took a jar of Nutella and bought brioche. I also took along things like cream crackers, malted milk biscuits, kinder bars, noodles that could be put into their snack boxes/made in the hotel room for a quick lunch. I know that sounds like a lot of junk, but they had plenty of the lovely fruits available in Spain, too 😂Pizzas were cheap - €8 and that fed both kids for lunch (and me too some days). We even had McDonald’s one night for tea!

I normally love an all inclusive holiday but with kids, it’s much more expensive so I’ve been making self catering holidays work on a budget.

Haha, mine too! He had the thrill of his life when he saw Takis in the supermarket last year. Totally agree with this. Though I do love the convenience of an all inclusive holiday, it’s definitely a luxury and a self catering holiday is much more affordable with kids (and more enjoyable than I expected it to be).

I know Paris well as I lived there. I even tried looking in my old neighbourhood which while slightly central is very very residential so not popular with tourists. (Which also means limited hotel options but still….)

No cheap joy. Unless I want a hostel and I am too old for hostels.

Also "not the best hotel" doesn't always mean there will be issues.

Sometimes that just means a slow check in, basic decor and food - so you basically treat it as a place to stop and nothing more.

Three DC is expensive. Most families are two DC. Cheaper option.

How much, and when are you looking for? I've just done a quick search for a Friday night in July based on my requirements (1 adult and 2 DC, sharing a room) and found plenty in the £70ish price bracket. Chain hotels, most of them with "Porte" in the name 🤷‍♀️.

This! I was looking and found plenty of cheap ones just now for late July (I found one for two people for £88 for two nights that had great reviews and was fairly central). I don't get it. And Airbnb in Paris you can usually get some cheap but lovely apartments. What sites are people using to search on?

We have 2 DCs, both in their 40s now. We used to go camping, caravanning, holiday parks in the UK or visiting family in other parts of the country. We had a bit of spare cash one year and went to Florida, but we were all crammed in one room, in a fairly manky hotel, and it cost a fortune to us. We were then sold points in a timeshare club. Now timeshare gets a bad name, but it worked for us. We got a week every year for 10 years, in good resorts, with good sized apartments. However, once the DC left home, it restricted us on where we could go, so we sold it, eventually, at a loss. Now, you can buy a timeshare for next to nothing from someone trying to sell. You have to pay a service charge, so check how much that is, before committing, you have to buy flights, but you know when you are going, so can book Easyjet as soon as they are released when they are cheapest. They are a bit of a pain to get rid of when the time comes, but if you have bought cheaply you can virtually give it away without loss. I wouldn't recommend buying without a lot of homework first, but as I said, it worked for us.

We have 3 kids and over the years we have done the following as time/money has been restrictive at various points.

When they we little we just did things like camping/butlins etc
Then we did a couple of eurocamps - once we flew and hired a car there and the other time we did a road trip to Italy stopping in a couple of countries enroute before staying at a great eurocamp near venice.
Now they are teens we have done more things like city breaks/greek island etc.

3 kids is always going to cost a lot more than 2 - its not just an extra kids worth - sometimes it can be almost double the cost for a family of 4!!!

Things to help reduce the costs are

• going Easter/may/october instead of summer
• going last week of august as generally europe are all back at school
• doing it not as a package so flights and hotel seperately
• having an apartment rather than hotel (although if you have a baby in a cot then a hotel might still work for you)
• driving rather than flying

We just went to Rome in Feb half term - flights were £380 for the 5 of us including a suitcase and apartments in Rome and Pompei came to about £800. Trains between rome and pompei were about £250 and then entry to various sites etc was about another £400. so with food/meals out etc it was about £2500 for the 5 of us (kids are adults sized now for beds/food etc!)

I got the car ferry from Portsmouth to bilbao in 2012 and it was a grand back then.

Tui always seems very expensive when I look. We’ve used Expedia very successfully to book our ‘package holiday’ type holidays (mostly, we go camping in France via the ferry, but we’re southeast England so it’s much more manageable!)

Meanwhile, I got the car ferry with a small van back from Santander to Plymouth last year and it was I think £550 including a cabin. It was 3 days into the autumn term for DS2 and 1 for DS1. Booked the preceding November using a friend's Club Voyage discount (RIP 😪)

I really think the crux of the matter is people's expectations of holidays, mind you. The Mumsnet norm appears to be paying thousands for a week or two in an AI resort- either that or going on a cruise. But that isn't the way most people have traditionally holidayed!

I'd say we were lower middle class growing up- dad had a professional job, mum worked p/t until we were both in secondary. We would go on a package holiday to Greece every other year (with Sunmed, anybody else remember them?!)- flights always at an unearthly hour, basic self catering villa where my brother and I would share a room. Pretty much the same kind of holiday as everyone else- staying in a hotel would have been regarded as very fancy! This was in the late 80s.

I think there must have been a bit of a bubble from roughly 1995- 2015 where flights and holidays were unnaturally cheap and people's expectations were raised very high. Now basic costs have been raised and companies are upping prices to protect their bottom line, but the average family is still demanding AI, in the middle of the school holidays, must have a pool, must get there by plane, private transfers, car hire, a room for every child etc etc. All this without spending ages trawling online to find the bargains.

Agreed. We go away a fair bit, I will start by saying we are not limited to school holidays so have more choice, but a lot of threads on here complaining about the cost of holidays seem to have a very narrow definition of what a holiday is - seemingly 7 days at a beach resort in a catered hotel.

We are going to Belgium for four days in a couple of weeks. Train there and back and basic mid price hotels. It's still a holiday.

Also in the time you quote the pound was very strong so places like Spain and Greece in particular seemed very cheap. I remember when people went on shopping weekends to New York!!

You could cut that in half by not going in school holidays

OP I think a lot of people use TUI but I actually find BA often a bit cheaper for packages and like TUI you
can spread the payment it’s not all up front. I think a lot of people opt for that, spreading the payments out

@Ginmonkeyagain I agree- we did 5 days in Amsterdam a few weeks ago - very lucky with the weather- loads of lovely affordable meals out , drinks by canals, train to Haarlem and Utrecht ( both lovely) and a lovely top end hotel out near the Pipj - definitely a lovely break. When we lived in Copenhagen I would recommend that too with anyone with kids- lots to do, white sandy beach, some amazing accommodation options including fantastic funky hostels with en suites , fabulous apartments. Can’t guarantee weather but we did tend to have a fair bit if sun in summer and a fair bit of snow in Dec/jan/feb - also fantastic public pools and swimming in enclosed sea ( which is blue) straight off the piers -all guarded - I think people need to think sideways if they want to get under £3-4K minimum with a family peak season if they want to go abroad .

Think like the cheap airlines, rather than buying a whole package, build you own holiday so you can choose only what you need and where you are happy to save money.

We always go for fairly basic and functional hotels/apartments as we are out and about a lot so just need somewhere to sleep and wash.

We did a villa in Spain in Feb half term and went with extended family. Worked out quite well, kept costs down and all the kids played together in the pool. Hired a car and explored a bit and just stacked the fridge with loads of yummy food and drinks.

She's a teacher! She can't go in school holidays or INSET days!

Why can’t she go in school holidays?

I was looking start of June and nothing was thrown up under £100 a night and outside of Paris (which was useless for me as I will be constantly travelling into the city to meet friends visiting from overseas.) I will check again.

That was Hotels.com and Booking.com

£88!!! Where on earth was this - that’s what I need!

For one person?! That sounds crazy, as my search was for 3 sharing, at the start of the school holidays. Unless there's a public holiday/ event happening in France, but even so...

Do you click the option to order results in lowest price first on booking.com? You can also roll over the map, where hotels are displayed by price.

Also, I know you say you don't want to do hostels, but I'm 51 and had a perfectly nice night in a small female- only dorm in Paris a couple of years ago. There were only a couple of other inhabitants- neither of them young- and we had a nice chat about our travels before going our respective ways. This was in the IYHF Yves Robert, near the Gare du Nord.