A CELEBRITY FAVOURITE BUT I PREFER TENERIFE
JOANNE HEARLE, owns a beauty salon. She lives with her partner, Mervyn, who owns a plant hire company. They spent €65,000 on a 17-day holiday in Barbados. First-class flights: €16,500. Villa (with housekeeper and cook):
€42,000. Food and drink: €5,000. Car hire: €1,500.
JOANNE SAYS: Last New Year’s Eve we dined by moonlight at an exclusive beach restaurant in Barbados and watched fireworks explode along the West Coast of the island, filling the sky with colour.
Our table was just feet from the Caribbean Sea, with floodlights in the shallow water so we could watch fish swim by as we enjoyed a seven-course meal.
The cost of that dinner alone was €2,000, but it was worth every penny for the experience.
We fell in love with Barbados on our first holiday there together over Christmas 2015, staying at the luxury Fairmont Royale hotel, which cost €42,000 for a couple of weeks, including dinners in the many local five-star restaurants.
Since then we’ve been back four times, staying in luxury properties on the beach, most recently a fully staffed three-bedroom villa on the Sandy Lane estate, which is popular with celebrity guests.
We spotted Dragons’ Den’s Duncan Bannatyne and boxer Anthony Joshua from our sun loungers on the private beach. The hefty price tag pays for the exclusivity of the location and guarantees privacy.
But for all the promise of luxury, the kitchen and bathrooms were dated, and following a spell of rain before we arrived, there were a lot of mosquitoes. Within days I was covered in painful bites, which put a dampener on things.
Both Mervyn and I work hard and it’s in our nature to be kind, humble and not to take each other or the holidays we have for granted. We know you don’t need to spend a fortune to have a lovely time.
Just weeks after our €65,000 Barbados trip, Mervyn and I had the best time on a €3,000 package holiday in Tenerife. In fact, that’s where we’re returning next!