Dubai is known as the city of rich, luxurious and for the tallest buildings in the world. Your first thought is usually I need a ton of money to visit, in fact, when our friends and family found out my husband and I were going to Dubai for our 1 year wedding anniversary, their first reaction was “wow, did you win the lotto?” We would laugh and said “nope, we got a great deal.” I’m here to give all my readers the full details of how much everything cost and how much we spent. Hopefully by the end of my blog post you are more comfortable to travel to locations that always seem like you need a million dollars to visit.
Dubai, was honestly a city we never thought we go to at such a young start of our traveling adventures. We first got the idea from my younger brother, who was joking, said we should go there on our next vacation. It sparked an interest and I started researching how much flights costs, hotels, expenses and all in between when planning a trip. My research led to Groupon where I found a deal for 7 days, flight, hotel and breakfast was for $999 a person. I read the fine print a million times, thinking to myself there has to be a catch, that price is so reasonable for Dubai. After a few days of looking into it and thinking about it I let my husband know of the deal I found and him being the more impulsive one he said book it. Together we hit that purchase button on my Groupon app and we let the planning begin.
So far, all together we paid $999 per person, included flight, hotel for a total of 7 days but actual time on land is 5 because you have 2 days of flying time. I also failed to mention that the was flying out of NYC and we live in Florida, so we also had to pay a supplement fee of $90 each to fly out of our local airport vs buying a separate flight to NYC. You might start thinking, oh no, supplement fee thats where it adds up but it did not , I promise. As I mentioned before this was our one year anniversary trip and 5 day total on land was not going cut it for us, therefore we extended the trip to be a total of 8 days in Dubai and 2 days flying. All together to adjust the Groupon package we paid an additional $243 for both of us. I still remember it clear as day when I was picking the flight arrangements thinking “oh my god this is where the catch is, its going to be an arm and a leg to extend our trip and fly out of local airport.” It was very surprising that all we paid was $243 extra. This entire trip was an independent trip and we had to book our own site seeing adventures and we used a company called Viator to book it all. I waited until one day they posted a 20% off sale and I used that coupon code to book our tours, all together we did 4 tours and for both of us it cost us around $350. All tours include hotel pick up and drop off and a guide along the way. I will share with all my readers a full detail post of all the tours we booked and pictures. The additional expenses for Dubai also was the hotel to extend out trip for the extra 3 days was around $200 and we booked it in the same hotel the package included so we did not have to travel to a different hotel after a few days. We also had to pay for lunch, dinner, souvenirs and public transportation. I cannot remember the exact total for each category but for food we sometimes did fancy restaurants, other nights we were too tired from our long day tours and did Uber eats to the hotel and even room service. I would estimate about $400 in food for both of us. Souvenirs is up to everyones discretion but we lucky to have a mega deal store across our hotel and found a ton of souvenirs for half the price at the mall or tourist shopping areas. All together for both if us to go to Dubai, have an amazing time and live life we estimate we spent about $3500. For Dubai that is a fantastic deal and I hope this inspires you to live life and travel!
XOXO,
Patty
PS. All posts and future reviews about Dubai were not sponsored.
