Kauai Family Travel: The Budget
I have said a lot of words about our trip to Kauai. Hopefully among all of those words, you’ve found something useful if you want to plan your own tropical getaway to the Garden Isle. I touched briefly on the topic of budget in the post where I shared our accommodations and outlined how I saved over $3000 by maximizing points. Today, I’m going to break down the entire budget for our trip to Kauai and highlight areas where we could have saved even more money for those who might want to take a similar trip on a tighter budget, providing what is, in my opinion, the bottomline for a small family. I will include our actual cost and where that was offset by gifts from others; this was a birthday trip, after all.
Transportation: $1063.33 (our actual cost)
Flights - $742.56, 27300 British Airways Avios, an Alaska Airlines companion fare
I’ll be the first to say that our flight situation was a hot mess and there are a million ways to do things better, so don’t be like me. I was hoping the non-stop between Portland and Lihue would have returned (which it has, just not in time for our trip) and waited too long to buy tickets and by the time I did, flights were expensive. Our dates were pretty firm because the points cost of some of the hotels had increased since I initially made those reservations. My best option was to use combo of points and my yearly companion fare that was about to expire to offset the cost. Because we would have a layover regardless, we elected to fly out of the more convenient Eugene airport despite the slightly higher cost compared to Portland. All in all, we paid less out of pocket for all of our tickets than we would have for a single ticket purchased with cash for the route that we flew. We timed this trip to be before Harrison’s second birthday so that we could take advantage of him still qualifying for a lap child ticket and flying for free. So we definitely saved some money.
However, in a perfect world, I would have used BA Avios on the non-stop flight between PDX and LIH on Alaska Airlines, paying less than $20 for taxes and fees. From the West Coast, this is one of the best ways to fly to Hawaii for free. The Chase BA credit card frequently has sign up bonuses of 100,000 and Avios can be used to book flights on Alaska Airlines. Currently, this non-stop flight in coach costs about 25,000 roundtrip, meaning the bonus would often be enough for 4 roundtrip tickets. One thing to note, although flying with a child under 2 is free if you do not purchase them a seat, we did have to pay 10% of the total points cost to include him as a lap child on that leg of our trip. If you did a better job than me at planning your flights, this expense category could be practically nothing.
Rental car - $95.77 I was generously gifted money for a rental car as a birthday present from my parents, so our out of pocket costs for this item were minimal. The total cost for a week long economy car rental was $595.77.
There is no way around it - this is a fixed expense that is difficult to reduce. Frankly, we were fortunate to get a car at the price we did - some people were paying this much PER DAY because of the rental car shortage over the summer. This is a pretty reasonable rental car price for a week and I offset the cost by requesting money specifically for this as a birthday present. I have found choosing a specific (often travel related) experience to spend gifted money on to be a helpful strategy with my parents who don’t like to just give money as a present, but who also want to give me something I will enjoy; they know anything that helps me travel will be a valued gift.
Although there are many places where a rental car may not be necessary, Kauai is not one of them. One way to save money is to rent through Rent-A-Wreck. As the name suggests, their cars are not the prettiest to look at or particularly new, but the trade off is more affordable prices. Plus, they will rent to individuals who are under 21 - 25 at no added cost, which is almost impossible to find. I can’t personally vouch for them, but the reviews are positive.
Gas - $60?? I somehow didn’t track this, but I don’t recall putting in much more than a tank of gas.
Taxis - $75 Using taxis in Kauai in summer 2021 was a stressful fiasco so perhaps returning the rental car early wasn’t worth the stress it caused. However, the cost still managed to be less than keeping the rental car for another 12 hours, so I’d call that a win?
Airport Parking - $90
Hotels: $327.49
I already went into all the details about this, but let’s again take a moment to appreciate how much money we didn’t spend on hotels.
Food: $1350+ (about $1500+ minus $150 birthday gift card that we specifically spent on food)
I always say this, but this is usually one of our greatest expenses on vacation and I don’t have any regrets about it. Add to that the overall expense of food in Hawaii and this turns into a kind of mind blowing number. Keep in mind, we did have a couple of celebratory dinners in the mix, but this total does not include many breakfasts - we brought food for Harrison to eat and the adults generally just had coffee. There are so many ways to bring the cost of food on vacation down - almost every place we stayed had at least a kitchenette, so purchasing groceries and cooking meals could be an option, as could intentionally choosing more of the budget friendly restaurants I previously shared. Food is such a personal preference, but know that you could easily spend less (but perhaps more easily spend more…) than we did on meals. With a few intentional changes and a little more effort, we could have halved our food budget.
Activities and Other Purchases: $803.42
Alaska Airlines Lounge Access - $50 One of my favorite perks of being an Alaska Airlines credit card holder is the half price lounge access when flying Alaska. Seriously, they have really nice lounges and on a longer layover, we couldn’t possibly spend less than $25 per person on food and beverages at the airport. So worth it, especially when you consider how much more pleasant it is to relax in a lounge than it is to do almost anything else in a crowded airport. Harrison could get in for free because of his age, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying a lot of complimentary cheese.
Flytographer Photo Shoot - $360 Although this may seem steep, I can assure I comparison shopped, despite already wanting to book a Flytographer shoot. It truly is the perfect combo of cost, ease of booking, and reliability. For this price, we got a one hour shoot and a gallery of 30 plus edited photos that we can download and use how we wish.
Waimea Canyon - $20 entry fee
Kilohana Plantation - $40 for train ride, $117.42 on rum from Koloa Rum to take home (some of this was for a thank you gift)
Smith Family Garden Luau - $216 The usual price of $125 per person was discounted the first few weeks of the luau’s reopening. Kids two and under are always free.
Again, this is such a personal preference. Other than a couple of big splurges, most of what we did - swim, hike, enjoy the beach - were free or inexpensive activities and we didn’t really purchase many souvenirs. If Harrison were older, many of these activities would have been more expensive and we probably would have added either a helicopter or boat tour to our trip, so our total in this area is probably on the low end for once. My recommendation is to choose a more expensive activity or two that are the most exciting to you and then spend the rest of your time enjoying all of the beautiful places Kauai has to offer for free.
Total Cost: approx. $3600
That is not a small amount of money. BUT for an 8-night trip to Kauai, we could have easily spent that much just on accommodations. With even more strategic planning and preparation and a more intentional approach to a food budget, a small family could take the same trip for less than $2500. With these budget posts, I always seeks to be transparent and perhaps shed some light on how to make trips like these accessible. So please, if you have specific questions or if I can further clarify something, let me know!