The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
How to save hundreds of pounds on your holiday
With the price of car hire and flights soaring, drive your own vehicle and take the ferry to Europe, urges Nick Trend
Travel was never going to be immune to the rising costs that are surging through the economy. And now they are beginning to become real. Last month Which? reported that holiday car hire prices have soared. This week, as the oil price rose to its highest level since 2014, the UK head of Air France-KLM warned that airfares would also inevitably rise as the year wears on.
The figures are stark. According to the Which? car rental report, a week’s hire that cost £99 on average in 2019 will now set you back £223. And, at peak times, the damage can be worse. Which? cited an example in Madeira, where the average weekly rate before Covid was less than £150, but where one reader had to pay £794 to hire a Fiat Punto for a week in August. It also said that, because hire companies have cut their fleets in the past two years and haven’t yet rebuilt them, rates are likely to keep rising and there may be problems with availability.
My own research on airfares has found plenty of peak dates where returns to Mediterranean hotspots are already around the £300 to £400 mark. And with each day that goes by, it is getting harder to find high season daytime flights for much under £150.
It’s a depressing scenario, but I would like to suggest a simple solution. You can avoid the worst of the rising costs of both flights and rental by taking your own car on holiday. Most ferry fares have gone up since 2019, but they are still low enough to compensate for higher car hire costs. I have been checking fares across the Channel this summer. On the short Dover-Calais routes, prices have risen from a starting rate of about £90 return three years ago, to more like £140 now.
But you can get returns for less than £200 travelling on nearly all dates through the summer (poferries.com). Meanwhile, the basic cost of crossings with Eurotunnel (eurotunnel.com) has hardly risen since 2019. Then, the lowest returns were £170; now they are largely on a par with the ferries.
The longer routes to Normandy and Brittany, which operate out of Portsmouth, are dominated by Brittany Ferries (brittany-ferries.co.uk). Lowest fares have edged up, but only a little. In 2019, the lowest return on, for example, the Portsmouth-Caen route, was £230. The best I could find for this coming May onwards was £238, rising to around £340 on peak summer crossings. Depending on where in the UK you start from, it would probably be cheaper to drive via Calais, but if you want to keep the mileage down, arriving in Caen gives excellent access to both coastal and rural Normandy. Likewise, the much longer St Malo route – which, although more expensive again, from £360, hasn’t gone up since 2019.
As ever with ferries, the numbers stack up especially well for families, because – at least on the short crossings – you pay the same for up to nine passengers as you do for two. Children can effectively go free, which is certainly not the case on planes.
For a family of four on a two-week holiday, the absolute bare minimum flydrive cost to, say, Spain or the south of France in peak season would be £1,200 in total – £150 each, plus at least £600 for a very basic hire car.
Of course, you don’t need me to tell you the practical pros and cons of selfdrive versus fly-drive holidays. Maybe northern France isn’t for you. Perhaps you don’t fancy a long drive – and the motorway tolls – needed to reach the Mediterranean. But at a time of rising costs and tightening budgets, it’s definitely worth considering.
Note that your UK motor insurance should cover third party liability in the EU, but check whether your comprehensive cover is also extended. A photocard driving licence issued in the UK is valid while driving in most EU countries, including France and Spain (see gov.uk/driving-abroad).