Budget per trip
 

I'm curious, how much do you guys usually budget/spent per trip to European cities like Paris, London, Rome, etc. How many in your travel party and how often do you guys go on vacation?

The reason I asked is because there are a few discussions/posts where people said they were paying 250Euro/night for hotel, etc.

I travel to Europe for vacation about once a year. Normally, I stay anywhere from 5 days to a week and I try to keep it under $1,000.

My last trip to Paris was a 5-night stay in January 2006 for $1100 (package included airfare, hotel, 4-day subway pass, 2-day city bus tour). And I spent about an additional $300 on food and misc. expenses. This was probably my most expensive trip.

Most of the time, I'm able to get by with $1000 total. N.B.: I'm a budget traveler.

I checked my old bank statements and there are some errors in the numbers I quotes in the original post. :-)

The Paris package was US$1175 and I withdrew 200Euros twice from the ATM machines there. But I came back with 100Euros, so I spent 300Euros during the trip.

It depends on so many things --

How you like to travel (some people dislike formal surrroundings)

What your other responsabilities are

What your other priorities are

What you income level is - and how much of it is truly disposable

We travel as often as we can - but frankly - getting time off - esp the two of us togeher is much more of an issue than $. So we will always spend extra $ to save time or to make the trip more convenient - since our time is so limited.

(People sometimes say - if you budget more you can travel more - but no - we can't - there's no more time so why not be comfortable in the limited time we have?)

I'm always overjoyed if we can find a hotel for 250 euros a night given what we want in the hotel. (We are not of the it's just a place to sleep school. we like to relax in the hotel between afternoon activities and going out to dinner - and we really need a room big enough to have a comfy sitting area, mini-bar, 24 hour room service and multi-cable TV with lots of movies to buy - in case we decide to eat in on a night with bad weather.) We also want a central location - again why spend valuable vacation time trekking around when there are hotels where you can step out the door and see something.

Similarly we do only non-stop flights - unless it's not possible to a particular destination. And we almost always do first or business - since we're usually operating off FF miles.

But - I didn;t travel this way when I was in my 20's, making much less money, paying off school loans and trying to save for a home down payment.

So for answer - we assume a minimum of $500 per night hotel in big cities, perhaps less in smaller places, take cabs from the airport to/fro town and eat in modest/moderate places most of the time but usually do one splurge dinner ($300/$400 for both - or equivalent depending on the economy) in each city. And we always do road trips versus train unless its a single point to point - like London to Paris.

I'm not one to splurge much on hotels because they just don't matter much to me. The most I've ever paid for a hotel in Europe was 160 euros (that was recently in Santorini), so if I'm going on a one-week trip (i.e, 6 or 7 nights). More typically, I look for hotels that are under $100 a night and I've been able to do that easily in Paris, though not in London. I can usually keep to a budget of under $1,500 or even less if I'm doing a one-city trip for a week, and that includes everything but shopping.

We recently took our first trip to Europe - Germany and Austria staying in Munich, Nuremberg, and Reutte (just over the border from Fussen). Our hotels ran us an average of 95E per night for my husband and I. We stayed in nice places, although they weren't high end.

We don't travel a lot - I only get 2 weeks of vacation time a year at the present time.

I think that you'll find that "we guys" are a heterogeneous group, and we exhibit a broad spectrum of travel styles and budgets. My last trip to Europe was my most-budget-cosncious (well, on the basics, at least), staying under 50 euro per person per day for all meals and lodging (two adults sharing). In France and in Spain.

But unlike Mr. Stallings, I have stayed in a $400 hotel room. Each experience is different.

Some travelers her are constrained by time, others more by money; in my own situation, Europe has had to compete with a lot of other travel this year (and so far, has lost out).

My most expensive trips have had higher budgets because they had higher head counts (family of five, which has now grown to six, with the addition of a son-in-law). And they're what I look forward to repeating, as soon as it makes sense.

Best wishes,

Rex

I mirror the OP on this one -- Europe once a year for @5 nights with a target air/hotel budget of $1k. (I don't count spending money as one has to eat regardless and I'm not a shopper.) My target budget makes it simple to know when to pull the trigger on purchasing the tickets, altho I usually end up more in the $1200 range.

Well, right now we (2 people) have spent $3,200 for a 10 day trip to Rome & Sicily in December. That includes everything except food, gas and tolls. Hotel outside of Rome, car rental for the entire time, airfare, apartment in Sicily, ferry cost Naples to Palermo, metro & attraction tickets. We have 700 euros for the trip (included in the tally).

We're really cheap, go at the wrong time of year and have a great time doing it. :-)

dave

We (two of us) spent $4,700 on our recent 14-day trip to Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Includes everything from gasoline to get to and from Washington DC airport to the gum Mrs. Fly bought when we landed at same airport.

use to be for me $100.00 a day plus airfare.
Now $150.00 a day plus airfair.

Last trip to Paris, I came home with money in my bank account. People couldn't believe it. We did the usual things, museums, tours, etc. Our hotel was 86 Euros a night for 10 days. Certainly nothing fancy, but it did the trick.

My boss went to Italy for the same number of days and spent $10,000! They're still paying it off.

Hi M,

RT ATL/CDG is about 650 pp. 5 nights at the Hotel Bonaparte is 410 pp. A carnet of metro tickets is 15.

Total $1075 pp doing it on my own.

My restaurant bill would be about 400E pp.

((I))

London every year for usually 3 weeks, but minimum of 2 weeks - the flat I rent is about $1100.00/week with full kitchen, washer/dryer, etc. in Knightsbridge.
Airfare with mileage upgrade & surcharges for that upgrade runs about $1500.00 (flying business class from the Caribbean.)
I actually don't spend that much while there other than stocking up on my favorite tea & naturally dining out but I do a lot of take-out or make simple meals at night since I have a full kitchen.