- Nearly 50% of Aussies are worried about the cost of living.
- Cruise holidays have bundled fares, offering more for your holiday.
- We’ve run the numbers on a week on the Gold Coast and a Carnival Cruise, and one is a staggering 70% cheaper.
As families approach the Easter holidays, data from savings site Finder shows that 50% of Aussies are implementing lifestyle changes to be able to continue to save for travel, such as skipping social events and taking on second jobs.
As cost-of-living pressures pile up, Aussies are looking for ways to keep their ambitions of regular vacations alive.
Many are even stretching their dollars, with 17% booking a holiday they couldn’t afford in the last 12 months, including 5% who went into debt just to travel and 6% who ended up having to cancel holiday plans due to financial constraints.
Cruise lines are increasingly using the value proposition to demonstrate that a holiday at sea is far more cost-effective than land-based stays.
So is cruising the most affordable Aussie holiday?
Cruising is a handy holiday during tough times for a simple reason: the fare is bundled. The cruise fare includes your accommodation, transport while on board, childcare, food, and entertainment.
Carnival’s own research shows that Aussies spend an average of $4735 per person on a 14-night holiday, while 16 nights of cruising with Carnival can start as low as $2400 per person. However, these numbers don’t tell the full story.
To get you some more accurate numbers, we’ve compared a one-week Carnival Cruise with a week on the Gold Coast for a four-person family from Sydney. Both these options include family-friendly holidays, during NSW school holidays, with plenty of activities on offer for kids.
Carnival is definitely the most budget-friendly option in Australia right now. However, other cruise lines like Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and Princess can also get you a great deal.
The cost breakdown
This breakdown will include the costs for getting to your destination, accommodation, basic entertainment and meals.
If a couple wanted to take their two kids to the Gold Coast from September 1 to September 8 this year, they’d be paying a total of $5542 for return flights, a four-star hotel, passes to the theme parks and food.
Return flights on Virgin Airlines come out to $1140 for four people, including luggage. A one-room stay at the Novotel Gold Coast comes out to $1342, there are of course, cheaper accommodations available, but a four-star hotel will generally have similar service levels to that of a cruise ship. $756 will cover a Village Road Show pass for four people to enter Movie World, Sea World, and Wet n Wild for five days, and Budget Your Trip says to allocate $72 per person per day for meals and snacks, which comes out to $2304 over the eight days.
Not included in this price is transportation, extra activities, theme park add-ons, shopping and souvenirs, and so on.
Now, the price for a nine-night Carnival Cruise to the South Pacific on Carnival Splendor around the same time starts from $3378 for an interior room for four. This comes out to about 45% cheaper, and includes two extra nights of travel.
This will include meals, activities and entertainment, childcare, accommodation and travel to destinations like Noumea, Mystery Island and Port Vila.
However, it won’t include extras like Wi Fi or specialty dining, as well as on-shore expenses like meals or shore excursions. While a more budget-savvy family could skip shore excursions and opt to just laze on the South Pacific beaches, they’d likely incur at least some costs while on shore.
The per-day cost of the Carnival holiday would be just $338 for the whole family, whereas the Gold Coast trip would come out to $693 per day, meaning the cruise is about 70% cheaper.
Not all holidays are created equal, there are definitely cheaper destinations than the Gold Coast out there and many may only want to cruise if they can splurge on extras like shore excursions and WiFi.
However, the key point is that for a holiday that secures accommodation, family entertainment, and interesting destinations, it’s hard to beat a cruise.
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Sorry but 4 people in a tiny inside cabin with bunk beds and without even a window is no way comparable to staying at the Novotel.
And if you’re going to spend $750 on theme parks then you have to add the not-i considerable costs of getting to these places.
An interesting though not very consistent comparison.
I don’t see that as an equivalent comparison.
1) You budget $756 to cover a Village Road Show pass for four people to enter Movie World, Sea World, and Wet n Wild for five days. That is way more than you get with the cruise – especially when you chose to add nothing for shore excursions and activities. So in one comparison you add the cost of entertainment/activities, and in the other you don’t. (No, evening shows and Green Thunder on some Carnival ships is not the same.)
2) You allocate $72 per person per day for meals and snacks, which comes out to $2304 over the eight days. This will be to a much higher food standard than you get on a carnival ship, which is very much basic. For such a holiday if you were trying to budget as per this article, you’d more typically get some fruit/snacks, bundle a breakfast and would easily halve the above cost (esp as you gave the standard adult rate, and there are usually much cheaper ‘kids’ menus), and it would still be a better standard than you’d get on Carnival inclusive (not going to speciality restaurants – which would be bumping up the Carnival cost).
Adding those up gets you $3,632, which is very similar to the Carnival cost. Then it comes down to which style of holiday you prefer more/where you want to go. Both then have pluses and minuses depending what you want/value more/or just feel like.