BUDGETING A TRIP TO EUROPE
Planning a Budget for Best Bang for Your Travel Buck
Planning a European vacation? I’m often asked “How do I budget for a trip to Europe?” The answer can vary as much as the kind of travel you’re planning. Alone, a couple, a family of 5? Lowest budget possible, staying in youth hostels, backpacking with snooze naps on trains and in airport lounges, or luxury five star hotels, spa treatments, first class air and limousines? One capital city or several cities and different countries, organized guided tour or personal discovery trip, exploring the back roads. Where are you coming from and what countries or cities. The estimates here are in US dollars and only general, exchange rates have been fluctuating with the shifting economic situation and my friends in other countries will have to wing it with a currency converter.
Air and Hotel Packages
If traveling
to a single city, air and hotel packages are available at good rates
through large travel sites like Travelocity or Expedia.
Often a week of hotel and airfare are available starting for under
$1,000,
better hotels will obviously be more, to which you would add food and
entertainment.
Package Tours
A pre-packaged inclusive guided tour can range from around $1,700 for a week to $5,000 for a month per person. European tours usually don’t include airfare in the price listed, and is either an add-on or self arranged. Depending on the tour provider, some meals may or may not be included. Tours usually include hotel, ground transportation, and some local sight-seeing tours. You would have to budget for meals, additional sight-seeing trips and shopping.
Independent Travel
If planning your own individual travel to multiple cities it gets a little more complicated. For a short rule of thumb, or at least my thumb, when I take a trip to Europe for anywhere close to three weeks from Los Angeles, staying in 3 star bed & breakfast type unique accommodation and 4 star hotels with good bargain deals in multiple cities in two or more countries and traveling alone in shoulder season of spring or fall, I usually plan on about $4,000 (and I’m usually off by a few hundred, always the unexpected, like that cab ride to the wrong ferry terminal in Ireland – but that’s another story). For a couple traveling together, it would be somewhat less than double that, with some hotel rooms the same rate, some about 20-30% higher for double room, some savings on companion fares or Saver Rail pass, etc. Summer travel will be higher. Four to five day European City trips for two with hotel and airfare combined deals can be found for $1,500 to $2,400. For a more luxurious spa trip it’s not hard to spend $3,000 to $4,000 a week. ©Bargain Travel Europe
For Contnued Budget Options
and Calculating Savings see
MORE BUDGETING
YOUR TRAVEL
These articles are copyrighted and the sole property of Bargain Travel Europe and WLEV, LLC. and may not be copied or reprinted without permission.
See Also:
TGV, TOURS & RAIL PASSES FOR FRANCE
WANT TO SAVE ON HOTELS? TAKE THE NIGHT TRAIN
