I'm curious, how much did your summer holiday cost this year?

[StoppedToTieHisShoe]

How much are people paying to go on holiday this year?

Our stats:
2 adults 2 children
1 week in July to Lanzarote
Basic 2 star self catering apts, small pool, all clean and pleasant. No luxury.
£1800
Spending money approx £1500

We eat out for lunch and dinner each day, visit a music bar/play pool after dinner and do a few local day trips but kids happy with pool/beach/playparks. They could run up and down a wall beside stairs for hours!

I pass by some of the bigger hotels with the entertainment and activities and wonder if we would like that. Would anyone share how much they are paying for these types of holidays?

Just wondering how much people are paying for different holidays and also, as an aside, when is the best time to book for best deals?

Portugal 4all inclusive five of us mid July for ten days - £6500.
Dominican Republic 5 all inclusive for same group for a week in December - £6000

Yeah same! I’m ashamed to say that if it involves me tidying and cooking,I’m not getting dressed up for dinner the odd night and there’s no pool etc for the kids to play in…then I don’t consider it a holiday! The fancier the better too! 😅

Fun may involve cool water parks, activities to try. Or A warm pool in a nice weather.

fun for parents is nice weather, lots of things to occupy kids and easy life (no cooking or easy access to shops, a place with all the mod cons etc)

just so you know. A caravan in Wales can still be very expensive in school holidays with no guarantee of good weather and requiring parents to slave away in the kitchen instead of relaxing

Have to agree. AI hotel with waterpark by a sandy beach and guaranteed hot weather sounds dreamy. A caravan in Wales would not be for me 😬

Points taken, but we owned the caravan, so once the initial cost was sorted, it was lots of very cheap holidays and the grandkids spent loads of time there.
We enjoyed it also, local restaurants and shops, the beach one minute away, and the park we were in did have a swimming pool, so there was lots for everyone to do.

We did a Disney cruise last summer, so it's made our August week in Menorca 4* HB for £3k seem like a bargain!

for the cruise experts, are the P&O budget cruises any good? Their prices seem to be a bargain compared to others.

@XelaMyes. Iona Norwegian cruise is lovely, it’s a beautiful ship and Norway is stunning. Arviva is the sister ship and does sunnier routes, I’ve read only good things about that. I would call them good value as opposed to budget, they don’t feel budget, and I am very fussy!

For those worrying that their kids won’t love a cheaper holiday, we arrived at Ikos Odisia today

I didn't know Ikos counts as slumming it nowadays, even when kids need to sleep on sofa bed 😁

Unfortunately when our son was young I agree- and as I’m paying then my view is my choice trumps theirs- we did all though enjoy a few times , provided we paid for the top accommodation on offer plus being near enough to go into a town for some meals out rather than the campsite takeaways or restaurant and it was an upmarket ish site with good pools, good cafe, on site bakery etc - wales wouldn’t have cut it ‘for me or H’

I’m the same, our wonderful parents take our children to Butlin’s every year because the kids love it, I don’t care how much they love it, I couldn’t bear it 🤣🤣

@ElleintheWoods this is how we book all ours- but we work for ourselves and no kids involved so it’s a lot easier - I do a lot of late June/early July ones and early to mid September ones. I book on booking.com on flexible, keep monitoring and often then flick and pay ‘non refundable’ at a better price 4 days before, if still available.

Fair enough, especially if you owned the caravan and it had a pool! Recently UK Airbnb and caravan rental prices have become crazy and often end up being not worth the money in cost /benefit ratio…

I love Wales, don’t get me wrong! But if it rains with small kids is far less enjoyable for me

And to be honest my sons fave holiday which was the last one we really did as a family when he was 16 was 9 days in California with 4 in LA at a flash hotel with his own room and we allowed him pool service meals several nights whilst we went out . All very bling but he loved it and got fussed over by the poolside wannabee babes -

Your son sounds like my daughter 😂

We actually own a small touring caravan and I offered her various road trips but the spoilt so and so prefers a hotel with pool bar 😬😬😬

Have to admit, the Monopoly and Scrabble sets did come out a few times over the years.😃

Yes. 1st-11th August. We had no choice on the dates - we have two weeks booked off and it fits with the children being on holidays.

2 adults and 3 children
4 nights at Center Parcs in Aug £1976
Activities booked £297.50 (may add more once there)
Eating out (lunch and/or tea) £800ish
So just over £3k in total

This thread has been an eye opener. It’s clear that holidays that sound exotic aren’t necessarily the most expensive.

DP and I spent 2 weeks in Japan at Easter (as expensive as it gets) and it would never occur to me, if someone told me that they’d taken their kids to centre parks for a few days, that they would have spent 50% more per day on their trip than we did on ours.

We know people who go multiple times a year and I hadn’t realised it was quite so expensive. It’s clearly worth it to them, and their kids absolutely love it.

I don’t believe in spending money for the sake of it, but also believe that money spent on something that brings you joy is never wasted.

Not quite the point of my post, but nice edit

Ha ha - yep my son would have given those a miss too -

Off the back of this thread I've been thinking about our holidays

We are absolutely tied to UK school holiday dates. We cannot go in term-time, even for 3 days either side of a half-term. There are 6 of us and we have never managed a kids go free offer apart from when DS was under 3 to Disneyland. Beach holidays just aren't the kind of holidays we like.

I do think £4000 including all our spends for a week in the Netherlands (4 nights Efteling, 3 nights Amsterdam / den Haag, Eurostar and train down to London) for 6 of us is good value. It is exactly the holiday we want and about £100 pppn.

We have just booked Spain for Twixmas and it is going to be about £2500 for 4 nights (£900 flights, £1100 half board theme park hotel, £60 airport parking, £300 transfers, £100 airport hotel). Reword it as £400 per person / £100 pppn and it sounds better 😂

Either £500,000 or £200 depending on how you look at it 🤣

We moved earlier this year. We live in the countryside and have a big garden overlooking farmland, the garden wraps around the house and we can be in and out all day. We’ve bought the kids a new pool, some secondhand swings, and built a treehouse out of old offcuts. We genuinely don’t need to go anywhere.

2a 1c 9 nights in Crete, £1700 and taking £1700 spends. We'll be self catering but eat out lunch and dinner, and planning on shoving a box of cereal iny case as that added up last year! Also plan to pirate ship and a Greek night.

10 days in Greece:
Self-catering villa with pool £2500
Car hire £300
Spending money £1500

Flights are on Avios points - they would have been another £3k otherwise. We always save up Avios for the summer holiday as it’s the most expensive time to fly.

We’ll eat out in the local fishing village every night - we’re returning to a place we’ve been to before so know the local area.