Brochures tell you what a trip costs to book. We tell you what it costs to take.
Every holiday on this site, re-priced with the meals it doesn't include and the flights it leaves out — then ranked per person, per day, on one honest scale.
- True Cost on every trip
- 20 holidays, 3 operators, one scale
- ATOL & ABTA protected packages
- Internal flights & transfers arranged
- No invented reviews. Ever.
The finding
The cheapest-looking trip isn't the cheapest
By brochure price per day, the best deal on this site is Private 14-day East Coast tour at £223 a day. Add the flights it doesn't include and the meals it doesn't cover, and it's really £379 — which drops it to 7 of 20.
The genuinely cheapest trip to take is Sydney, Brisbane, Whitsundays & Cairns, at £292 a day all-in. Nobody else publishes that, because nobody else puts three operators' trips on the same scale.
Same money, different stories
- Private 14-day East Coast tour — brochure£223/day
- …after flights and meals£379/day
- Sydney, Brisbane, Whitsundays & Cairns — brochure£233/day
- …after meals (flights already in)£292/day
The method, in full
How True Cost is calculated
We publish every assumption, so you can check it — or redo the sums with your own numbers.
1. Brochure price
The operator's published lead-in price per person, exactly as shown on the tour page.
2. + Meals not included
For each day on the ground, every breakfast, lunch and dinner the package doesn't cover, at £14 / £20 / £38.
3. + Flights, if missing
Land-only packages get a £1,200 allowance for return economy flights from the UK.
4. ÷ Days
Divided by the trip length, so a 9-day break and a 53-day grand tour compare fairly.
Worked example: Highlights of Australia
| Brochure price | £8,049 |
| Days on the ground (22 − 2 flying) | 20 |
| Meals included: 7 breakfasts, 1 lunch, 1 dinner | |
| 13 breakfasts × £14 | +£182 |
| 19 lunches × £20 | +£380 |
| 19 dinners × £38 | +£722 |
| True Cost | £9,333 |
| Per day (£9,333 ÷ 22) | £424 |
What we deliberately leave out: optional excursions, drinks, tips (Australia doesn't really have a tipping culture), travel insurance, and airport parking. They vary too much by person to be fair. We also count hotel-dependent breakfasts on private tours as not included — the cautious reading.
The league table
Every trip, ranked by True Cost per day
Green bar: brochure price per day. Red bar: what it really costs. The longer the gap, the more the brochure leaves out.
One trip is excluded because it has no published price. Figures are per person, sharing, at each trip's lead-in price and date.
Questions
About True Cost
Why not just compare brochure prices?
Because packages include wildly different amounts. One 14-day trip includes flights, hotels and 15 meals; another includes hotels and a driver but not the flights or a single dinner. Their brochure prices are measuring different things. True Cost puts them back on the same scale.
Why don't you include optional excursions?
Because they're genuinely optional and people spend very different amounts on them. Meals and flights aren't optional — everyone eats, and everyone has to get there. We quote typical excursion prices on each tour page so you can add your own.
Aren't your meal prices a guess?
They're an estimate, and we publish it so you can adjust it. £14 breakfast, £20 lunch and £38 dinner adds up to £72 a day — in line with typical mid-range eating in Australian cities, where a flat white is around £4 and a main course £20–£30. Change the meal budget and every trip gets cheaper or dearer together, so the ranking barely moves — in our tests the top three never change. Flight costs matter more, but only for the land-only private tours. Try both with the controls above the league table.
Do the private tours really cost more than they look?
Yes, and by more than any other type. They're land-only, so the £1,200 flight allowance is added, and they include almost no meals. On average they end up around 70% above their brochure price — which is why the cheapest-looking trip on this site finishes well down the True Cost table.
Does a higher True Cost mean a worse trip?
No. It means a more expensive one. A 53-day grand tour with a Holiday Director is doing a different job from a 9-day multi-centre break. True Cost tells you what you'll actually spend; our reviews tell you whether it's worth it.
Now pick one on the real numbers
Every tour page shows its own True Cost breakdown, alongside the full itinerary, route maps and our verdict.
Browse all 20 holidays →