Eastern Europe cities cheapest for Brits
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Cities in eastern Europe are still the cheapest for British tourists to visit while Lisbon tops those in the euro, a new Post Office report has found.
Its City Costs Barometer saw Budapest’s forint currency trump Riga and Prague as the cheapest city when pricing up the total of 12 typical holiday items such as a meal, local transport and sightseeing. The total cost for Budapest sat at GBP134.76, less than a third of the most expensive cities of Stockholm (GBP420.36) and Copenhagen (GBP440.45).
However of the 25 cities surveyed prices had increased in 22 of them, with Stockholm seeing the biggest rise by 33%, followed by Riga (+30.7%), Boston (+28.4%) and Vienna (+26.3%). Costs dropped in Berlin, Prague and Lisbon, while of the cities using the euro Amsterdam and Rome were the priciest.
The Post Office named Dubrovnik as an emerging city break destination for Brits alongside Moscow, Krakow and Abu Dhabi although New York, Sydney and Rio de Janeiro topped the dream list. Domestically Belfast was the cheapest UK city to visit.
“Rising prices in most of the cities we surveyed, combined with the falling value of sterling, make it more important than ever to check prices for key items like meals, drinks and sightseeing before booking as these are costs that most city break tourists cannot avoid,” said Andrew Brown from Post Office Travel Money.
“There are big price variations across Europe – not just in the eurozone. This means UK holidaymakers can make their pounds stretch further by choosing a cheaper capital like Lisbon or Budapest and it seems that many people are doing just that as Post Office sales of Hungarian forint have surged by 141% in the year to date, compared with 2012,” he added.
