Top 5 Unexpected Costs While You Are On Holiday

You have chosen your holiday destination, you have booked a hotel room already, you have purchased the flight tickets, you have managed to figure out the food and restaurants budget – everything looks ok, right? After all, planning and organising your holiday is possibly not that much of a struggle and agony. However, you should be aware of the fact that planning a holiday also hides a lot of unexpected aspects and uncertainties, unexpected costs, for example.

After you have spent your hard-earned money for already months, in order to make sure you have the full budget for your dream holiday or a trip to a place you wanted to visit for such a long time, thinking about money and money issues is definitely not a number one topic you want to think about, while relaxing and spending quality time away. In order to avoid some possible issues, make sure to have a look at the top five unexpected costs you might need to deal with, while you are away on holiday and tips on how to prevent these happening and ruining the budget you have already planned in details.

Mobile Operator Services

Before heading to some exotic new destination far away, one of the things you should do is making sure you know and understand the tariff plans of your mobile operator for making calls and using the Internet outside the country. Of course, if you want to spend some money in general, using free Wi-Fi whenever you can find it is a good idea. However, many people prefer to have the convenience and safety that they can make a call and use the Internet all the time, no matter where they are. For example, ask your mobile operator how much will cost a call back home. This way you will make sure to save yourself the non-enjoyable surprises when you get your telephone bill.

Health Issues and Costs

Of course, no one would like to deal with some health issue, while on a holiday, but things like this happen and could happen to everyone, so being prepared is the best way to sort out such situations and problems. So it is advisable to think ahead and plan some possible costs linked to health problems and issues. Especially considering the fact that while you are on a holiday or travelling, you are often more open to some more extreme activities, sports, etc. But besides the high adrenaline and the pleasure, you might get a trauma, while doing so. In case you are facing some serious health issues and problems, your medical insurance will cover the treatment costs, so make sure to have a health insurance, when travelling. However, if you do not have a travel health insurance, or for some reason it does not cover the treatment you might be in need of, make sure to have planned a bit of an additional budget for situations.

Luggage Costs

Buying flights tickets is already a pretty serious financial aspect of your holiday budget. It gets even harder when the unexpected flying and luggage costs are added. Perhaps you might have some previous experience with such charges and costs you didn’t expect and didn’t know about when purchasing the tickets. Or you are a serial over-packer and you often find yourself in situations, where your baggage weights way more over than what you are required to bring with you. For cases like the above mentioned, we recommend you planning some additional money.

Hotel Services

Many hotels offer some great and tempting services, but wait a minute, are they all included in the price per night? In order to avoid some unexpected and, often, very high costs and charges, make sure that you understand very well what hotel services are included in the price of your room. Some additional hotel costs often include SPA, minibar, room service, washing the clothes and ironing, etc. While all these little service components might not look that expensive individually, at the end your bill might surprise you in a negative way, so keep track of what services you are using and how much this cost and skip everything you don’t need. While SPA procedures might be a must for someone to relax and have a great holiday, using the minibar is really not a necessity, especially considering the fact that minibar prices are at least twice higher than what you can get from the local supermarket.

Using an ATM

If you need to use an ATM to get money, while you are abroad, you will quickly find out that there are usually some commissions charged for international bank transactions. Of course, these transactions will be charged to your bank account and such charges are not an exception for credit cards only, because debit cards are often a subject of transaction charges too. In order to make the best choices, make sure you research the conditions of your bank and card in such situations, while you are abroad before you are away travelling. In some situations, the transactions commissions might be so high that it would be better to simply exchange money to the currency of the country you are visiting and not using your card at all.