Holiday Budget Planner

What to include in a holiday budget

Most holiday budgets are set by the two big bookings and then quietly overrun on everything else. Flights and accommodation are the easy part because you pay them upfront and remember the number. The costs that break a budget are the ones spread across the trip, or paid before you leave and forgotten.

• Flights, baggage, seat selection and airport transfers
• Accommodation, plus resort fees or tourist taxes paid on arrival
• Food and drink, split between eating out and self-catering
• Activities, tours and entry tickets
• Local transport — trains, taxis, car hire, fuel and parking
• Travel insurance, visas and any vaccinations
• Airport parking or transport at the UK end

How much spending money to take

Spending money is the hardest line to estimate, and a published daily average is rarely much help because it describes a trip that is not yours. It is more reliable to build the figure from how you actually travel: how many meals you expect to eat out rather than self-cater, how many paid activities you want to do, and whether you will mostly walk or mostly take taxis.

Price a single realistic day from those answers, then multiply by the length of the trip. A day with two meals out, one paid attraction and a couple of short taxi rides gives a very different number to a day of self-catering and walking — and you know which one describes your holiday.

An all-inclusive trip changes the shape of this rather than removing it — food and drink largely disappear, but excursions, tips and anything off-site still need a figure. Either way, set a daily amount and treat it as one line in the budget rather than an open-ended pot.

Splitting costs between travellers

Some costs are genuinely shared and some are per-person, and mixing them up is what makes a holiday budget wrong for couples and families. Accommodation and car hire are usually one cost regardless of how many people go. Flights, insurance, activities and spending money scale with each traveller.

The Scope control on each category handles this: choose Total for costs paid once for the whole group, and Each to multiply by the number of travellers. It also makes it clear who is paying for what if the trip is being split between two people rather than paid from one account.

Exchange rates and card fees

A budget built at today’s exchange rate can drift by the time you travel, and paying by card abroad often adds a foreign transaction fee of around 3% unless you use a card that waives it. Cash withdrawals abroad can carry a separate charge on top.

Adding a buffer of roughly 5–10% to the total covers rate movement, card fees and the costs that only appear once you are there. A holiday that comes in slightly under budget is a much better outcome than one that needs topping up mid-trip.