Cheap travel destinations are not always the ones that look cheap. A country with low prices that requires a four hundred pound flight per person can work out dearer than a European city with high prices reachable by train. This is a selection of ten genuinely affordable destinations, plus the criterion worth applying to judge them.
The right way to judge a destination
What matters is not the price of a coffee but the sum of three things: the cost of getting there, the cost of sleeping and the cost of living there each day.
Of those three, the second is the only one that can be removed entirely through a home exchange. The list below is therefore written for anyone who solves accommodation that way: the question becomes simply how to get there and what daily life costs.
Ten cheap travel destinations that work
- Portugal. Short flights from most of Europe, affordable food and a very active exchange community.
- Inland Spain. Extremadura, Castile and Aragon. Low prices, enormous heritage and no saturation.
- Mainland Greece. Considerably cheaper than the islands and with reasonable flights outside August.
- Poland. Krakow and Gdansk, with very low restaurant prices and cheap direct flights.
- Czech Republic outside Prague. Brno and Moravia, at half the price of the capital.
- Hungary. Budapest remains one of the most affordable European capitals.
- Southern Italy. Puglia, Calabria and Sicily, markedly cheaper than the north.
- Morocco. A short flight and a very low daily cost, with growing exchange supply in the cities.
- Romania and Bulgaria. Mountains, medieval towns and among the lowest prices in the European Union.
- Latin America for long stays. The flight is expensive but it amortises if you stay a month.
The cheap travel destinations that are not
It is worth saying this too. Some places with a reputation for being affordable stop being so once you do the full calculation: islands in high season, where accommodation soars; heavily touristed capitals, where eating near the centre costs what it does at home; and long haul destinations for a single week, where the flight dominates the budget.
The practical rule: the further the destination, the longer the stay has to be for it to make sense.
When you go changes the price more than where
The second half of June and the first half of September are, across most of Europe, thirty to forty per cent cheaper than August, with essentially the same weather.
That single change reduces the cost of a trip more than any choice of destination. The seasonality data published by the Office for National Statistics shows the scale of that difference clearly.
How to build your own ranking
Take three destinations that interest you and calculate, for each, the return transport cost for the whole group, the daily cost of food and local transport, and the number of days. Add it up.
If accommodation is solved through an exchange, the result is usually very different from the ranking you had in your head. It is common for a nearby European destination to beat a distant one with a reputation for being cheap.
Frequently asked questions
Which cheap travel destinations are most accessible from the UK? Portugal, Ireland, Poland and Morocco, through the combination of short flights and low daily costs.
Is there exchange supply in eastern Europe? Less than in western Europe, but growing and with very little competition.
Is a long haul destination worth it for one week? Rarely. From three weeks, yes.
And travelling in peak season? If there is no alternative, lead time becomes the decisive variable.
Start with the accommodation
Solving where you sleep changes the ranking of destinations entirely. The process is in the complete home exchange guide and more saving ideas are in the article on how to travel on a budget.