Europe for 5

[Anonymous]

Looking at Europe for next spring break - how much would a trip to Europe (all in) for a week cost a family of 5? We are flexible on where to go just looking to get to Europe with the teens before they head to college!

[Anonymous]

A lot

[Anonymous]

They don’t have hotel rooms for five- so plan on two rooms per night.

[Anonymous]

^ some do. Obviously biggest expense is airfare. Op, that's easy to look at. Start there and see if you can afford the trip.

[Anonymous]

Europe does have some family hotel situations with 1 regular room next to a room with bunk beds. There'll be a sofa somewhere.

What they don't have a lot of is two-queen rooms.

There are also Air BNBs.

[Anonymous]

You need to be more specific. One week in London and Paris would be much more expensive than a week in Portugal. Would you expect to stay in hotels and move around or rent an Airbnb for the week?

[Anonymous]

Expect close to 10k for flights and then there is a LOT of flexibility on the rest. We spent about 18K on our trip to London and Paris last spring break for 4. Would have been more like 15-16 if we only did London. Smaller cities are a lot cheaper for lodging and activities. You can spend a ton on private tours or just wing it and see lots of beautiful things for free. I’d figure out your priorities and where you’re willing to skimp and go from there.

Fwiw I I was just looking at Spain for this summer and you can spend $600 night for a room at the JW marriot or $19@ a night for the cheaper marriot version up the street. So there’s a huge range. You can often get gorgeous lodgings for cheap in the “lesser” cities.

[Anonymous]

Tickets are cheap even in July. $800 to Eastern Europe, 4 planes. Most hotels and Arbnbs are under 150 euros a day.
Food can be anywhere from $20 a day from super market to $100 eating out per person.

[Anonymous]

KLM has promotions to Amsterdam and a lot of connecting flights from there like Lisbon and Florence. You can get a large apartment in Lisbon for $300 a night for everyone and cook some meals. Plane tix are not too bad right now or you can buy some points. We are going and it'll be 175k points for the 4 of us (kids under 12 are cheaper than adults).

[Anonymous]

Start with researching the flights, cost of flights. That tells you most of what you need to know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Expect close to 10k for flights and then there is a LOT of flexibility on the rest. We spent about 18K on our trip to London and Paris last spring break for 4. Would have been more like 15-16 if we only did London. Smaller cities are a lot cheaper for lodging and activities. You can spend a ton on private tours or just wing it and see lots of beautiful things for free. I’d figure out your priorities and where you’re willing to skimp and go from there.

Fwiw I I was just looking at Spain for this summer and you can spend $600 night for a room at the JW marriot or $19@ a night for the cheaper marriot version up the street. So there’s a huge range. You can often get gorgeous lodgings for cheap in the “lesser” cities.

This is absurd.

We are going to Denmark this summer, I went to Portugal last winter, and we went to Italy the summer before that. Family of 3 and we spent no more than $3,300 on flights that we shopped around for and bought a tier that allowed changes (at a minimum) but no refunds. That math doesn't math to 10K for 1.66% the cost, unless you insist on Business or a ++ economy tier. If you are open to choosing a city based on flight costs you can absolutely get $1,200 a person or less if you make choices.

Hotels will likely be more for you since you must have two rooms, but plenty of cities where rooms are $250 for a pretty nice set up. Or equivalent scale up for suite with 2 beds and a sofa bed. For a week I would expect to spend $10K, but certainly not close to 20K unless you need high-tier everything, eat only fancy meals, rent a car, and buy lots of tours.

[Anonymous]

You can do am Expedia deal, Spain is pretty cheap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Expect close to 10k for flights and then there is a LOT of flexibility on the rest. We spent about 18K on our trip to London and Paris last spring break for 4. Would have been more like 15-16 if we only did London. Smaller cities are a lot cheaper for lodging and activities. You can spend a ton on private tours or just wing it and see lots of beautiful things for free. I’d figure out your priorities and where you’re willing to skimp and go from there.

Fwiw I I was just looking at Spain for this summer and you can spend $600 night for a room at the JW marriot or $19@ a night for the cheaper marriot version up the street. So there’s a huge range. You can often get gorgeous lodgings for cheap in the “lesser” cities.

$10K for flights is crazy. We just did London/the UK for spring break, and leaving the Wednesday night before spring break, we paid about $600pp for my family of 6.

All in, for 10 nights, we probably spent about $10-11K for our family of 6. This included 4 nights in London at a nice hotel where we needed 2 rooms and paid extra for a view, 1 night in Inverness at an AirBnB, 2 nights in Edinburgh in a room that actually fit all 6 of us in 5 beds, 2 nights in Leeds in 2 rooms at a Marriott, and 1 night at an airport hotel near Heathrow in 2 rooms that we booked on points. We booked all of this fairly late, so if I had booked earlier, we probably could have saved quite a bit on hotels.

In 2023, we did Amsterdam and Copenhagen for spring break, and it was considerably less expensive. Your total costs really depend on where you are going.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Expect close to 10k for flights and then there is a LOT of flexibility on the rest. We spent about 18K on our trip to London and Paris last spring break for 4. Would have been more like 15-16 if we only did London. Smaller cities are a lot cheaper for lodging and activities. You can spend a ton on private tours or just wing it and see lots of beautiful things for free. I’d figure out your priorities and where you’re willing to skimp and go from there.

Fwiw I I was just looking at Spain for this summer and you can spend $600 night for a room at the JW marriot or $19@ a night for the cheaper marriot version up the street. So there’s a huge range. You can often get gorgeous lodgings for cheap in the “lesser” cities.

$10K for flights is crazy. We just did London/the UK for spring break, and leaving the Wednesday night before spring break, we paid about $600pp for my family of 6.

All in, for 10 nights, we probably spent about $10-11K for our family of 6. This included 4 nights in London at a nice hotel where we needed 2 rooms and paid extra for a view, 1 night in Inverness at an AirBnB, 2 nights in Edinburgh in a room that actually fit all 6 of us in 5 beds, 2 nights in Leeds in 2 rooms at a Marriott, and 1 night at an airport hotel near Heathrow in 2 rooms that we booked on points. We booked all of this fairly late, so if I had booked earlier, we probably could have saved quite a bit on hotels.

In 2023, we did Amsterdam and Copenhagen for spring break, and it was considerably less expensive. Your total costs really depend on where you are going.

What airline and how long did you spend in Iceland or Dublin for $600 pp to London?

And different people have different definitions of “nice hotels”

[Anonymous]

My family of 5 has been to Europe for the last two summers and flights were definitely $10K. It's possible that the cost has dropped now for summers or even that spring break is significantly cheaper.