How much do people spend on holiday?

Everybody needs a break from time to time, and holidays are a great way to get away from it all and experience new things. A holiday can also be a valuable opportunity to spend quality time with your partner or your children. However, holidays do not tend to come cheap. For many people, they are a major expense or even completely unaffordable. But there are a number of ways to easily keep the cost of holidays down.

What Does a Typical Holiday Cost?

While it is important to bear in mind that there is a lot of variation, it is still possible to pin down some average figures. For a UK family of four taking a two-week break, the average holiday cost is £4792. On top of this, while on holiday Britons tend to use up an average of £227 per person for each week they are away in holiday spending.

This latter figure can include essentials such as food as well as souvenirs, general leisure shopping and anything else you might spend money on while you are away.

Spreading the Cost

Because of the expense involved in taking a holiday, many families look for ways to spread the cost. This doesn’t technically reduce the amount of expenditure involved in a trip – but it does make it more manageable.

Many families choose to do this by paying for their holiday with a loan or another form of credit. This will give them the money they need to take a holiday immediately, and allow them to repay that money in stages every month. While they will usually have to pay more because of interest, the monthly repayments will be easier to meet than the full one-off cost of the holiday.

A number of dedicated holiday loan options are available from a range of lenders, designed specifically for this purpose. Many of these take the form of secured loans, where some valuable possession is offered as security in case the borrower cannot meet repayments. While this tends to result in better rates because there is less risk for the lender, it should be approached carefully.

Other borrowers use a low-rate credit card, ideally 0%, as a cost-effective way to spread some or all of their holiday costs.

Getting the Best Deals

Spreading the cost of your holiday may make it more manageable, but it doesn’t actually reduce it. There are several tactics you can use to bring down the actual cost of your trip, and one of these is seeking out the best deals. Different hotels and accommodation options – even those with similar standards – may offer very different prices.

There will also be a lot of variation in ticket prices for the same journey between different airlines and transport operators, especially if you are willing to take a slightly slower trip or change in order to save.

As with buying insurance or choosing utility providers, there are comparison websites that can help you find the best deal on your holiday. These will look at a range of travel and accommodation options and help you compare both the prices and the features they offer.

Booking last-minute often gets the best deals but requires some flexibility about when and how you travel – and possibly about where exactly you go.

Travel Insurance

When it comes to travel insurance, it is once again a good idea to look at comparison websites. These will make it easier to find the cheapest and most appropriate deals. It is often best to use more than one site to ensure you are covering the full market.