Average Cost of a Holiday Abroad 2025

Whether we’re tired of braving the summer weather in Wales or just like to collect stamps in our passports (not that they do that anymore, but...), Brits like to travel abroad. When planning your next holiday, it can help to know the average cost of a holiday abroad. How much do other people spend on airfare, hotels, food & drinks and entertainment? We delve into the details to help you budget for your next holiday.

Table of Contents

• How much does a holiday cost, per person?
  • How much is a holiday for a family?
• How many nights away can you afford? See these calculations.
• FAQs

Average Cost of a Holiday per Person

According to NimbleFins analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics, the average per-person cost of a 9-night holiday abroad is now £1,312. Of this, our team calculates an average of £232 is spent on airfare and another £120 per night (or £1,080 total over 9 nights) is spent abroad on accommodation, food, drink and entertainment.

Historical data from the ONS Family Spending report indicated that holidaymakers spent around equal amounts on accommodation as they did on food, drink and entertainment—although in recent years this ratio has fluctuated. If the split is still 50/50, that would mean spend of around £60 per night on accommodation and £60 per night on food, drink and entertainment.

We arrived at these figures after analysing data from two Office of National Statistics publications: Travel Trends 2023 and Family Spending 2023, then adjusting the cost figures for inflation through Q4 2024.

Cost of a holiday by number of nights away

Not everyone is lucky enough to go away for 9 nights. What is the average cost of shorter holidays... or longer? Below, we've calculated the average cost based on the figures above for holidays of varying lengths—both without and with airfare expenses.

For example, a 5-night trip abroad costs around £832 all-in, on average (including airfare). While a two-week holiday would cost close to £2,000 on average. Of course, people book holidays that are cheaper than this—or a heck of a lot more expensive!

Average Cost of a Holiday for a Family of Four

The cost of a holiday for a family of four is not usually 4X as expensive as a holiday for one—NimbleFins calculates that the average holiday cost for a family of four is around £3,628.

While you do need to buy 4 airplane tickets (unless you have a baby that sits on your lap), kids are typically cheaper to feed, they don’t drink alcohol and efficiencies can be found in accommodation expenses, such as booking a family room with multiple beds. Kids do raise the cost of the holiday over that of a solo traveller, obviously, but a family of 4 should not be paying 4X that of a solo person.

So what's a ballpark figure for the cost of a family holiday? Let's make some back-of-the-envelope calculations. First, assume that a family of 4 still has to buy 4 plane tickets—that would cost around £928 in total, on average. Then if we say that a family of 4 actually pays 2.5X as much as one person for accommodation, food, drinks and entertainment, then the cost of these for 9 nights would tally to £2,700.

Adding together the flights and the other expenses bring the average holiday cost for a family of four to £3,628. This is a rough figure, but you get the idea and can make your own adjustments as needed.

Average cost of a holiday abroad, per night

In early 2025, NimbleFins estimates the average spend per night once abroad to be £120 for accommodation, food, drink and entertainment (excluding airfare). Or £137 per night for an inclusive tour (which includes airfare and accommodation, and possibly food, drinks and entertainment).

The figures are an estimate for 2025 and reflect year-old Travel Trends figures from the ONS adjusted upwards by inflation through the end of 2024.

How many nights can you afford to go away? The more, the better, of course! Let's run some calculations to help get a handle on how far your holiday budget can go.

How many nights away can you afford?

Some simple calculations can predict how far your budget will go—meaning, how many nights away you can afford. For these calculations, we assume average per-night spend of £120 for food, drink, entertainment and accommodation, plus £232 for airfare.

If you were to spend these average amounts, then a £1,000 budget would cover 6 nights away, for example. A £1,500 budget could see you through a solid 10 mights.

Please use these figures as inspiration for how to look at your holiday budget and adjust according to your own needs. And keep in mind you might incur additional expenses like airport/visa fees, transport, travel insurance, etc.

How much can you afford to spend per night on a holiday?

Average per-night and airfare prices vary a lot from one trip to the next. So another interesting way to think about your holiday budget is to consider how much you can afford to spend per night, given your overall budget and the number of nights you want to be away.

This is a fun exercise because knowing your per-night budget will help guide you towards countries that might best suit your wallet.

Use the table below to see roughly what you can afford per night; the calculations show nightly holiday spend for accommodation, food, drinks and entertainment (but not airfare!) for different total budgets and nights away.

Note, this section does NOT include airfare! (You'll see why in the next section, where we compare per-night holiday costs by country.)

For example, a holiday budget of £1,000 for accommodation, food, drink and entertainment (not airfare) for 7 nights away equals spending of £143 per night.

Now that you know your per-night budget for accommodation, food, drink and entertainment, where can you head for £143 per night? Or £111? It will depend partly on if you have extra cash set aside to pay for the flight or if you need to include flights in this as an all-inclusive tour. Not surprisingly, these holiday costs vary significantly by destination country.

Cheapest holiday destinations

NimbleFins analysed data from the ONS and found these are the cheapest holiday destinations.

Pakistan tops the charts for cheapest per-night costs (£42 per night or, oddly, only £32 per night for all inclusive), followed by Tunisia, Brasil, Lithuania and Bulgaria (£67 per night; £81 per night all inclusive).

These countries might be most cost effective for those who want to maximize their time away for a given budget. But these are not the most popular—more on cheap AND popular destinations below!

Note, the per-country figures were not rounded up by inflation, since this can vary from one place to the next.

Most expensive countries to visit

The most expensive countries to go on holiday are Finland, Switzerland, UAE, USA, Norway, Barbados and Canada. Per night costs in these countries range from £136 (Barbados and Canada) up to £194 (Finland) for accommodation, food, drinks and entertainment.

Inclusive tours (including airfare) to Norway and Finland cost over £240 (!) per night, on average.

Top 15 most popular holiday destinations

The most popular destinations for UK residents to travel to are Spain, France, Greece, Italy and Portugal. Spain tops the charts by a mile, or should we say a kilometre, with more visitors than the next three destinations combined.

Turkey, USA, Netherlands, Ireland and Germany round out the top 10 most popular holiday destinations from the UK.

There are almost as many visits to the 15 most popular holiday destinations (44.5 million) as there are people in the UK (68.35 million).

Cost to visit the 15 most popular holiday destinations

Of the 15 most popular holiday destinations from the UK (see the previous table), the cheapest to visit are Poland and Turkey, while the most expensive to visit are the UAE and USA.

Visitors to Poland spent an average of £72 per night for accommodation, food, drink and entertainment; holidays to Turkey set visitors back £86 per night.

At the other end of the spectrum, the UAE and USA cost visitors around £158 per night for accommodation, food, drink and entertainment.

This doesn’t include flights.

Are package holidays cheaper?

It seems to vary by country, among other factors.

A check of the data above shows that the average per-day cost to holiday in Brazil, Morocco and Pakistan is cheaper for those on inclusive tours compared to other types of holidays—despite air or train travel to/from the destination being included in inclusive tours.

On the other hand, of these 'cheaper' holiday destinations, a few stand out for having inclusive tours that come at a premium. Notably Slovakia, Australia, Sri Lanka and Romania.

Holidaymakers seem to pay around the same price per day to visit Egypt, whether they go all inclusive or not (£83 per day).

FAQs

How we calculated the average cost of an international flight

The Family Spending Report says there was £9.9 billion spent on international airfares by UK households in the financial year ending 2023. Travel Trends says there were 44,125,000 air trips abroad that were to visit friends or relatives or go on holiday (excluding inclusive tours) that same year.

Dividing £9,932,000,000 spent on airfare by 44,125,000 air trips equals a cost of £225 per trip for the year ending March 2023. Applying inflation figures to this increases the cost by around 3%, for an estimated cost of £232 per air trip abroad heading into 2025.

Protecting Your Holiday

Top tip for travellers: Buy travel insurance as soon as you book your trip. If you wait, you could miss out on cancellation cover which is one of the biggest reasons people claim on their policies. Some travel insurance companies have policies starting from under £10, and the average cost of travel insurance starts from £5 to £20 for a single trip depending on your destination. Travel insurance can save you hundreds, thousands or even more should you need to claim.

Those heading on a cruise can read our article on cheap cruise insurance companies.