INSPIRE: Cheaper holidays and breaks in the Eurozone?

The strong Pound, with the Euro at a historic low in Europe, suggests that this is the time for you to travel from the UK to Europe, when time there will be less expensive than it has been in years. One Euro in summer 2014 exchanged at around 80p sterling, but this summer this has come down to around 70p per Euro – 12.5% less. The pound now goes a long way in the Euro zone!

Virtually every on-the-ground expense such as restaurants, wine, tours and souvenirs in much of Europe has become substantially cheaper for us. Train tickets, internal flights and even some flights from the UK, purchased here, can be less expensive too. The recession in Europe has kept a lid on inflation linked price rises for some time now. A UK tourist strolling the streets of Paris this summer can buy 25% more croissants, cafe au laits or mini Eiffel towers than a year ago with the same pounds.

Generally, accommodation in the UK has become comparatively more costly, as prices year-on-year have continued to grow since 2013. Recent TripAdvisor data shows that hotel rates in Europe have been on the decline, with rooms booked on the TripAdvisor site for the summer of 2015 averaging 23% less than in summer 2014. According to TripAdvisor’s TripIndex, reported in the USA, which factors in hotel and transportation costs, the price of a one-week vacation has dropped this year by 11% in 24 out of 25 European cities, when compared with the summer of 2014.

However there is some evidence emerging, reported in travel media, that local difficulties in Greece and the Greek islands with economic problems and a reported influx of migrants, together with restrictions on holiday destinations in Tunisia and concerns about safety in Egypt, are impacting on the cost of package holidays to warmer climes in the late summer and autumn this year. Many searching for late summer holidays have noticed that prices can be substantially higher now than could be found for similar holidays in late spring and early summer. This appears to be driven by the reduction in places to go with increasing demand for the safer destinations such as Spain, Portugal and the Canaries.

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