Travel Budget Calculator

How to use the travel budget calculator

1. Fill in the fields — they start with a worked example.
2. Read the answer, and the arithmetic shown beneath it.
3. Copy the results, or adjust the inputs to compare scenarios.

About this tool

A trip's cost is almost never the number people quote, because the number people quote is the flight. Flights are booked first, separately, and months earlier, so they lodge in memory as the price of the trip while accommodation and daily spending — which usually exceed them — arrive later and unremarked.

This adds the parts up in the open and gives the figure that makes trips comparable: cost per person per day. Two holidays with wildly different flight costs can work out the same per day, and that is the number worth knowing when choosing between them or when deciding whether to stay an extra night.

Accommodation is charged by the night while everything else is spent by the day, and the calculator keeps those separate rather than multiplying both by the same number. Getting that wrong overstates a short trip's cost by a noticeable margin — on a two-night weekend it is a third of the accommodation.

The contingency is not padding. Something on every trip costs more than planned — a taxi because the train was cancelled, a meal out that ran long, a bag that had to be checked — and ten per cent is the usual working figure. A budget without one is not a budget, it is a best case.

Common uses

• Working out what a planned holiday will actually cost.
• Comparing two destinations on cost per day rather than on flights.
• Deciding whether an extra night is affordable.

Frequently asked questions

Why separate nights from days?

Because accommodation is charged per night and everything else is spent per day, and there is always one more day than there are nights. Multiplying both by the same number overstates a short trip.

How much contingency should I add?

Ten per cent is the usual working figure and covers the ordinary overruns. Somewhere with expensive medical care or unreliable transport deserves more.

Is cost per day a useful comparison?

It is the most useful one. It strips out how far away somewhere is and how long you are staying, which is what makes two very different trips comparable.