Cost of summer holiday to Canada - family of 4.

[Flowersforbees]

We're restricted to school holidays so most realistically looking at summer holiday.

10-14 days.

In 2024 kids would be 8 and 5.

Having not been abroad for 6 years now I have no idea how much a holiday costs.

Would aim for as cheap as possible whilst still having 'trip of a lifetime'.

Any location would be considered. If anyone has done it recently / is it going this year i'd be interested in overall cost / expected cost.

10k

Impossible to answer without knowing the kind of trip you want. I could do it on a lot less than £10k (and could spend a lot more) flights to Canada can be steep, we flew to the US which was much cheaper then drove to Canada and just added a US leg to the trip, worked out better value overall.

We went as a family of 4 to Canada for 3 weeks in 2018 and the trip cost us £12k through trailfinders. Probably with extras (food/trips) we spent £15k total.

East coast is usually better value than West Coast / Rockies

Bay of Fundy is fab and a place we want to go back to, found it comparably good value compared to places on the west coast. Prince Edward Island also seemed good value.

We flew into Halifax and road tripped - just looked and flights to Halifax this summer are about £1100pp return.

Our car hire was about £1200 for two weeks for a medium SUV.

On top of flights and car hire, our budget was about £6500 for accomodation, attractions and food for 2 adults for 2 weeks.

Looks like it's out of the question .
Clearly my thoughts on the cost of a holiday are hugely out. I thought maybe £5 or 6k.

I think I'm still stuck in the past when I travelled all around the world (including Canada) for 6 months for about 3k in total!!

Oh well, holidays to Whitby for a few years to come.

It’s that as the kids get older everything is x4 so it does get expensive. Plus with long haul you’re £3-4 fown before you’ve even got off the plane.

I feel like there's a big space between holidays to Whitby and a "trip of a lifetime" to Canada.

You could look at Norway or Scandinavia more generally? Flights would be much cheaper, freeing up budget for accommodation, trips etc. You could definitely have a 2 week holiday in Europe (that's not just a package holiday) for that kind of budget. If you want mountains, could look at Slovenia or the Tatra mountains in Northern Slovakia for a cheaper option that could very much feel trip of a lifetime/exciting for lower cost.

I agree with this.

I don’t understand the thinking behind a ‘trip of a lifetime’ which would mean children have no other holidays. A trip of a lifetime that you save up for for years and means no more holidays for years after, could fund 3-4 trips abroad to Europe which would mean children get an overseas trip every couple of years instead of every 10 years.

There was a thread a few weeks ago from someone who was going to spend their whole inheritance on a once in a lifetime trip as their children had never been abroad, but the budget could easily have funded 4 or 5 shorter European trips and made travel a regular feature of their childhood.

For trip of a lifetime I mean, we would only go there once and would want to make a fab trip of it. For us a trip of a lifetime could involve amazing sightseeing whilst still eating in in a self catering accommodation to keep it a bit cheaper. It didn't necessarily mean spending all the money we have.

Perhaps I used the wrong phrase.

But perhaps a European holiday would be a good starting point. I think I just got carried away with my thoughts.

You say you haven’t been abroad for 6 years so I assume your children have never been abroad or were very little last time they went abroad. Could the money you have been saving up for the Canada trip have been used to take them to Greece or Rome or Amsterdam (or whatever you/they are into)? In other words, has the goal of a big trip to Canada prevented them from going abroad elsewhere in the last 6 years (Covid aside)?

The main reason we haven't been abroad is that we wouldn't have really felt like it was a holiday with 2 young kids. So we wanted to wait until they were a bit older so we could enjoy dinners out, play card games etc and not just feel tied to schedules.

@Flowersforbees mumsnet isn't the best place to get budget holiday advice tbh, not in the way you phrased the question at least just because it always draws in the "I spent £30k" crowd. As I say the biggest issue with Canada is flights, if you could find flights for cc £500pp (tricky in August tbh) and happy to stay in motels I think £5-6k is plenty doable, but you'd need to research carefully. I look up flights first, car hire (we tend to road trip), look up hotel prices for motels where we want to go, then look at how much the activities we want to do cost and see how much we have left from my ideal budget to see what we'd spend a day, then I look at menus or go on Facebook groups to gage daily spends (but again in my experience people really over inflate this compared to what we spend).

And yes East is likely cheaper than West. But flights is what I'd concentrate on to start with, maybe play around and see if May half term is better.

Agree you’re being rather extreme and dramatic.

Go to Austria. Gorgeous for an active family with primary aged kids. Lakes and mountains. Would be just as good for half the price. We’ve had some great holidays there when ours that age.

Also the primary years are precious time for holidays. 6-12 are the golden years. Then they get stroppy and want to be with friends so don’t squander that time.

I agree with @fgfhds that it’s not a complete write off as an idea - but the flights are the real place you need to be looking at for whether it is doable.

As I said, direct Halifax flights this summer are looking to be around £1100pp which would make your budget impossible. But, there is the possibility of cheaper flights definitely. I’ve just had a look and you can fly to Toronto with Transat from London for approx £800pp this summer.

Would doing something in the Easter holidays be possible? I know the weather might not be so good, but I’ve just looked and flights from London to Toronto are currently about £470pp return for two weeks in the Easter holidays.

We've just come back from 2 weeks in Canada (Toronto to Quebec road trip), 2 adults, 2 teens. Total cost about £12k, including flights, car hire, all hotels (4/5) , eating out every day, all trips (whale watching, ziplines, kayaking, via ferratas, white water, Niagara stuff, CN tower walk etc. ) All the extras are what massively upped the cost.

Your children are much younger than ours, so you won't have many of these costs, and when we've previously been the west (Rockies, Vancouver etc) when they were younger , it was a much cheaper holiday.

Flights for 4 adults(as they are classed) and car hire for 15days was under £4k through Trainlfinders, flying Air Transat. (As an aside, we flew Air Transat to save a few hundred and I have to say we were pleasantly surprised. Great flight, new looking planes, better food/service than BA, Virgin IOE)

Sorry, that should say 4/5 star hotels/appts. I was trying to say it could have been much cheaper with accommodation if we'd have wanted.

It entirely depends what you’re wanting to do, where you want to stay/go/see/do, and when you want to go. If you can be flexible on times and flights you could maybe keep the flight costs to about £2.5K. Car hire another £700-£900 for the fortnight, which still gives you a bit to play with. If you want summer holidays then it’s just not do-able for that price. Supermarket prices are higher there than here, but not massively.

However, you should probably still do an outline plan and cost it up. We did 23 days, 2 adults, Ontario plus Rockies (including an internal flight) for less than £6k all in, but not in school hols and half of our accommodation was close to being free as it was timeshare exchange.

Watching for tips

We've not long done a week in Canada, 4 adults, 5 star hotel, plus food and trips probably cost 6/7K. However we didn't go in the summer which will be much more expensive. I believe Air Transat have some of the best flight deals.

I should also add May half term is a great time to go if you're willing to take the kids out of school for a few days. Summer can be very hot (especially if you're in the city) and Easter can still be extremely cold and snowy.

We did 2.5 weeks Vancouver to the Rockies last year. it was about £10-£11K all in I think. If you are going on a ‘trip of. Lifetime’ you don’t want to miss out on those activities that make it such a trip (e.g whale watching, zip lining, white water rafting)so that racks up the cost.

If you have under 12’s they can get an interrailing pass for free and that might be something to consider. We flew to Croatia, spent a bit of time on the beach and then made our way back on trains over a couple of weeks, stopping in Budapest, Prague, Berlin and Amsterdam. That was a lot cheaper.

Norway would be fab but I think could be even more expensive than Canada.

I'm not sure Air Transit flies to Halifax but definitely look at Nova Scotia. This will be a lot cheaper than flying to the West and is just as stunning. You'll probably be paying £3.5-4K in flights alone. West coast will be even more.

Once you are there though, food prices are same as UK and you wont to spend much on days out as the attractions of hiking, swimming, natural wonders are free. You could find self catering accommodation and car hire and bring the cost in for about £7-8k if you are careful.

If you haven’t been abroad with the DC I would definitely start with Europe not Canada. Not only cheaper but also much less travel time so more time there, and far less jetlag.

What is it that attracts you about Canada - if it’s mountains and landscapes you could look at the Alps, Dolomites, Pyrenees, Slovenia, Romania.

If you haven’t been abroad with the DC I would definitely start with Europe not Canada. Not only cheaper but also much less travel time so more time there, and far less jetlag.

Agree with this. If your kids haven't flown before you have no idea how they might be on a plane so short haul is better. Canada is a good 7/8 hours at least and a lot of flights are overnight which can be a real killer with the jet lag no matter your age. Maybe do a couple of years having cheaper European breaks then go to Canada in a year or two?