The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Portugal trumps Turkey as best value destination
An annual holiday price report has singled out the Algarve as the place where your money goes furthest, says Nick Trend
For the last two years we have heralded Turkey as the best value destination for a summer holiday in Europe. No longer. Although the Turkish lira continues to lose its value at a spectacular rate – this year it is down against the pound by almost 81 per cent – local inflation has pushed up prices so fast that they are becoming more expensive even for overseas visitors. The price of a meal out in Marmaris, for example, has soared by 20 per cent from £40.39 in 2023 to £48.89 this year.
Step forward Portugal. According to the latest Post Office Annual Holiday Costs Barometer, which compares the price of a shopping basket of holiday essentials in 40 destinations around the world, the Algarve now has the lowest prices in Europe.
Here, a typical holidaymaker’s shopping basket, which includes the cost of a bottle of sunscreen, a cup of coffee and of eating and drinking, came in at £59.69 on Portugal’s most popular holiday coast, down very slightly from last year’s £59.95. Overall costs in Marmaris, meanwhile, have gone up from £57.59 to £66.07 – still competitive, but a big rise.
Other top-value European resorts are Sunny Beach, Bulgaria (£62.49) and Paphos, Cyprus (£73.32). Those compare with the most expensive resorts in the Med: Nice (£120.09) and, surprisingly, Majorca (£98.42).
Long-haul travellers will find the best value in Hoi An (Vietnam), where the basket came in at £51.18, Cape
Town (£54.35) and Mombasa, Kenya (£54.93). Japan’s reputation as an expensive place has surely been laid to rest. The Post Office deems it the fourth cheapest destination in the world with a basket cost of £59.05, a fall of more than 17 per cent from £71.49 last year.
The places most likely to make the biggest dent in your holiday wallet are Costa Rica (where a bottle of sunscreen costs £23.55, a glass of wine £8.50 and the basket totalled £158.04), New York (£143.28) and the Caribbean islands, led by Antigua (£138.42).
The Post Office report has its flaws – the cost of hotels and flights isn’t included, so it is hard to make overall comparisons. But when I did a spot check comparing airfares to Faro (in the Algarve) and to Dalaman (for Marmaris), they were almost identical (around £240 return with EasyJet from July 2027) whereas normally I would expect flights to Turkey to be more expensive (it takes twice as long to get there).
Fares are determined by demand, so perhaps the message is already getting through to holidaymakers that Turkey is looking more expensive and there are bargains to be had in Portugal. The sheer number of flights (plus a wide choice from regional airports) to the Algarve also adds to its attraction.
Much depends on what you like to do on holiday. If you enjoy a beer, Hoi An in Vietnam (average price for a glass: £1.16) or a city break to Budapest (£1.75) look much more attractive than downtown Dubai (£8.69). Wine drinkers are far better off in the Algarve (£1.76 a glass), than Cancun (£9.38). A three-course meal for two (including a bottle of house wine) costs just £34.64 in Cape Town, less than a third of the price in New York (£106.17) and Costa Rica (£107.38).
The good news is that, overall, it has been a strong year for sterling. It is up in value against 27 out of the 30 bestselling currencies sold by the Post Office’s currency exchange. These include the Japanese yen (sterling is up 16.3 per cent), the US dollar (up 7.3 per cent) and the euro (up 3.84 per cent) – which is also positive for us because most of the economies which use these currencies have had a lower inflation rate than we have in the UK. This means local prices have risen less and we get more of the currency for our money.
By contrast, sterling has had a poor run against the Costa Rican colon (down 0.5 per cent), the Mexican peso (down 1.6 per cent) and the Polish zloty (down 4.6 per cent).