All-Inclusive Holiday for 5 in August on £2500?

catwoman73

Second other comments about AI not being possible at your stated budget in August, unless very low quality food/accomodation.

I've found Jet2holidays.com to be very good value. We're getting a week in Tenerife in May B+B in a very nice 4* Spa Hotel and the price for the flights/hold baggage/transfer/hotel was only about £200 more than the cost of the same flights alone on Jet2.com

I would choose Spain, whether mainland or Mallorca or the Canaries, as there will usually be areas that are more spanish and less tacky, but if you want to avoid people drinking all day, you probably need to avoid AI hotels!

zagfles

catwoman73 wrote: »

Second other comments about AI not being possible at your stated budget in August, unless very low quality food/accomodation.

I've found Jet2holidays.com to be very good value. We're getting a week in Tenerife in May B+B in a very nice 4* Spa Hotel and the price for the flights/hold baggage/transfer/hotel was only about £200 more than the cost of the same flights alone on Jet2.com

I would choose Spain, whether mainland or Mallorca or the Canaries, as there will usually be areas that are more spanish and less tacky, but if you want to avoid people drinking all day, you probably need to avoid AI hotels!

Exactly - anywhere offering unlimited free booze is going to attract people who want to take full advantage of it!! Instead of subsidising them, book things separately and only pay for what you need, not other peoples' excess drinking!!

wallbash

but if you want to avoid people drinking all day, you probably need to avoid AI hotels!

not other peoples' excess drinking!!

Been to an Ai hotels for the last six years , NOT once have I seen excess drinking.The ability to have a drink any time avoids the rush before 'last orders'.

A lot of people have preconceived ideas of Ai who have never been OR try and do Ai on the cheap , a recipe for disaster.

My advice stands , you cant do Ai ( successfully ) on OP budget.

zagfles

wallbash wrote: »

Been to an Ai hotels for the last six years , NOT once have I seen excess drinking.The ability to have a drink any time avoids the rush before 'last orders'.

You don't always see it - some have minibars in the room stocked with full spirit bottles :eek:

A lot of people have preconceived ideas of Ai who have never been OR try and do Ai on the cheap , a recipe for disaster.

My advice stands , you cant do Ai ( successfully ) on OP budget.

Exactly, which is why most people are advising against it.

5 people is the ideal number for a driving holiday - it will so much cheaper than flying unless you get a bargain.

OP just as an example you could go somewhere like Duinrell in Holland, which is superb and gets rave reviews (onsite theme park & water park included, good beach nearby, loads to do, evening entertainment inc).

A bungalow for 5 would be probably under £1000, plus about £100-150 Eurotunnel return, £100-150 petrol (it's about 300 miles from London), and say £100 for stuff like breakdown cover, green card, headlight deflectors and other stuff you need for driving. Maybe £1300 for transport plus accomodation, would leave £1200 for food/drink etc, £171 a day! Should be easily enough unless you're serious eaters/boozers!

Or fly there with the likes of Easyjet, though that will be maybe £200-300 more expensive and you don't the advantage of having a car there.

ant1979pry

WOW thanks for all the responses!! - That's a serious amount of good advice! Will have to spend some time looking through some of the options suggested.

Have looked at a few sites myself and had pretty much come to the conclusion that a decent quality AI is beyond us in terms of cost.

Found some nice villas in Malta so just having a look at flights - it seems we save a fortune by goinf later in August - Skyscanner showing £250 per flight - does this seem like a good price?

zagfles

ant1979pry wrote: »

WOW thanks for all the responses!! - That's a serious amount of good advice! Will have to spend some time looking through some of the options suggested.

Have looked at a few sites myself and had pretty much come to the conclusion that a decent quality AI is beyond us in terms of cost.

Found some nice villas in Malta so just having a look at flights - it seems we save a fortune by goinf later in August - Skyscanner showing £250 per flight - does this seem like a good price?

Do you mean £250 per person return or £250 each way for all of you? The former is expensive - that'd be half your budget, the latter is reasonable. I'd be trying to keep the flight costs to around £500 total max, paying more really isn't worth it for just a week. You can get cheap flights in August, because people go and come back at different times, other school holidays are more expensive.

And yes, the second half of August is a lot cheaper, a lot of the European schools are back then.

ant1979pry

zagfles wrote: »

Do you mean £250 per person return or £250 each way for all of you? The former is expensive - that'd be half your budget, the latter is reasonable. I'd be trying to keep the flight costs to around £500 total max, paying more really isn't worth it for just a week. You can get cheap flights in August, because people go and come back at different times, other school holidays are more expensive.

And yes, the second half of August is a lot cheaper, a lot of the European schools are back then.

£250 per person for a return ticket.

To be honest am beginning to think about looking at options that can be driven to, not sure what kind of weather we will get if we do that though! Not convinced Holland would be any warmer than here - the Mrs would kill me!! lol

Obviously_the_best

ant1979pry wrote: »

£250 per person for a return ticket.

To be honest am beginning to think about looking at options that can be driven to, not sure what kind of weather we will get if we do that though! Not convinced Holland would be any warmer than here - the Mrs would kill me!! lol

Where are you based, much easier to answer anything when you know what the nearest 2/3 airports are?

ant1979pry

Obviously_the_best wrote: »

Where are you based, much easier to answer anything when you know what the nearest 2/3 airports are?

In Lincoln so could travel from East Mids, Manchester, any London.

zagfles

ant1979pry wrote: »

£250 per person for a return ticket.

To be honest am beginning to think about looking at options that can be driven to, not sure what kind of weather we will get if we do that though! Not convinced Holland would be any warmer than here - the Mrs would kill me!! lol

If you're driving could look at somewhere like the Vendee in France, wouldn't have thought it was worth going further for just a week.

If you can get a bit longer off then somewhere like NE Spain may be an option, eg El Delfin Verde is a good site, right on the beach, and a quick glance at the website it's about EUR100 a night in second half Aug. But it's a long drive, about 750 miles from Calais, so you'd need an overnight stop. If you could get 2 weeks off with 12 nights there it'd probably be about £2000, about £1000 for the accomodation and £1000 for travel costs inc tolls and overnights in France (VERY approx). But of course no food/drink included, so you'd need to up your budget a bit unless you have BBQs every night (some people do!).

Or if you want to fly somewhere, look at where you can get cheap flights to as that'll be the major expense. Maybe southern Spain or the Algarve, eg Malaga/Faro.