How much money does it cost to visit the most beautiful places on Earth?

How much it costs to visit the most beautiful places on Earth? If you are a travel aficionado, you must have asked yourself this question at least once. Visiting the most beautiful places on Earth is the ultimate goal of every traveller. Most of us out there have long travel lists we happily write off every time we return home from holiday.

Since travelling requires sometimes significant (financial) resources, let’s have a look at how much it actually costs to visit the most beautiful places on Earth. To answer this question you need to consider several aspects.

Write a list with the most beautiful places on Earth you want to visit!

Before everything, you will need to assess, which are the most beautiful places on the planet for you. Many travel guides are covering this topic out there. One such guide, which in my opinion does a perfect job gathering the most beautiful places on Earth in one place is Ultimate Travel List: The 500 best places on the planet ranked. This Lonely Planet guide suggests places like the Taj Mahal, Angor Wat, Niagara Falls etc. that everyone should visit in their lifetime. I’ve got this guide as a farewell gift from one of my previous jobs and has been my number one go-to travel guide ever since. 

You must know that the most beautiful places on earth to visit list is different from person to person. Because we are all different and while I consider Machu Picchu to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth, you might think differently. So it’s important to have this in mind when you start working on your most beautiful places on earth to visit list. Now, that you’ve decided on the list, what you really need to ask yourself next is, right, how much time do I need to allocate to visit all these places I just decided on?

Visiting locations scattered all across the globe can be time-consuming, so consider a few weeks to even several months to write off your most beautiful places on earth to visit list. Be realistic and give yourself enough time to enjoy all the beautiful places you will visit.

Deciding on the most beautiful places on earth you want to visit list and the timeline are the first and most difficult steps to complete. Now, that you have the list and the timeline, there are some other aspects you’ll need to consider.

Accommodation costs for visiting the most beautiful places on Earth

• The accommodation: deciding on what type of accommodation you’ll spend money on can significantly increase or decrease your overall budget. While staying most of the time in hostels can help you save money in the long run, you need to be aware that this comes with limitations. Most of these limitations will include a lack of privacy because you will share everything: the bedroom, the kitchen and the bathroom. The upside of this type of accommodations is that you always get to meet new people. This helps especially when you travel on your own. On the other hand, you can choose hotel rooms which do provide you with all the privacy you need. However, they will cost more. Also, staying in hotels can feel extremely lonely especially for solo travellers.

• An extremely cheap accommodation used to be Couchsurfing ( I refer to it in the past tense because I have not used it in a while). This platform connected hosts and travellers and helped those travelling on a very low budget to get good accommodation anywhere in the world. I’ve mainly used this platform in Europe and managed to save up significant amounts of money back in the day. I’ve even managed to travel throughout Italy by staying with couchsurfing hosts only. The platform used to be free to sign up. The only downside was last-minute cancellations by your host (although I did not have that many). Despite that, it was a good alternative if you’re looking to save up money by not paying for your accommodation while travelling.

P.S I’ve checked the platform recently and it seems that now, Couchsurfing is asking for a fee to join it. It was not the case in the past. Apparently, the service was affected by the pandemic. Please read carefully the T&C before joining the platform.

Food & Transport costs

• Food: sometimes food money can make or break your overall budget. Again it is up to you how much you will allocate towards your food budget. Will you be very frugal and only buy the cheapest meals all the time? Or will you have fancy restaurant meals every time you are hungry? Or maybe a combination of both of these? Don’t forget that buying alcool and tabacco can increase substantially your food budget. Although, you can choose to have alcool in cheap regions only like: east Asia, Eastern Europe, South America etc.

• Your transport costs is something else you need to be aware of. You can bring your transport costs down if you make smart choices. Like for example purchase off-peak/off-season tickets. Look out for any good flight deals. This might mean travelling at unconventional hours (very early or very late). You might even have to give up on some comfort on the way: travel in old busses or fly with no extras included (sometimes only with a piece of hand luggage). Ryanair, EasyJet, Wizzair are famous in Europe for their cheap flights deals. However, they make you pay for everything else (extra luggage, food, drinks etc). So you need to consider this when booking with these companies. Some really basic buses in Europe are Megabus or NaionalExpress (UK). Other EU countries have their own low cost bus companies which offer basic services in return for cheap tickets. By chosing the least expensive way of transport, you will save up money. However, you need to be aware that you will give up on other things.

Other costs

• While building your list with the most beautiful places to visit, you must have realised that some of the places require entry tickets. You must also know that some countries like India for example, have different entry ticket prices for tourists and locals. Therefore, be prepared to pay more for visiting your favourite sights. This unfortunately is not something you can change, is just for you to budget for it. Or decide on more places which are free to visit e.g most of the national parks and museums in the UK are free of charge.

• Card fees. Depending on the country (in my experience developing countries have this more than developed countries), you can end up paying some nasty withdrawing fees. I remember in the Philippines, they used to charge me almost 4-5 US dollars if I withdrew any money. So try to pay by card when you can and also get a good travel card (I believe revolut is quite popular nowadays). Using the right type of card abroad will help with your overall spending level massively.

• Travelling with a friend can help you reduce some of your expenses by 50%. However, you need to be aware that you will be with someone 24h a day, which for some people can be too much. If you have no friends available to travel with you, you can try pairing up temporarily with other travellers. Try pairing up especially when travelling to countries that are considered expensive. This technique will help both of you.

• By pairing up with someone, you won’t be travelling alone all the time and you’ll save up money. If you don’t know where to meet your travel partner, hostels really are the best way to meet other travellers. However, sometimes it happens you meet someone outside hostels too. It happened several times to me too. I ended up travelling with people I would randomly meet on the street for example. If you are not a fan of this method, you can try other things. For example, you can join online groups and it might happen that both of you travel at the same time and decide to travel together. There are many online resources to meet other travellers like Facebook groups, travel apps etc.

What else to consider?

As you can see there are so many variables you need to consider to establish how much would cost you to visit the most beautiful places on Earth. That’s because each one of us travels differently, so what might work for me might not work for you. Some of you might have health conditions that require permanent medication. This is an extra cost some of you out there would need to budget for. Others might have other conditions which could stop them from having certain foods or do certain things. These aspects can also impact the overall budget.

Some figures to start with

I believe there is a budget everyone can start working on and adjust to their needs. The way I came up with the total figure for mine was by looking at my previous travel budgets. You must also consider the countries you plan to travel to. In 2020, I was planning to take a sabbatical year, however, this did not happen due to COVID19.

While my sabbatical has been on standby, for now, I want to share with you how I came up with my overall budget for 12 months of continuous travelling. My main travel area would have been Latin America, however, I was also considering what’s known as expensive countries e.g. Canada, Iceland and UK (Scotland). My aim would have been to not spend more than 3 weeks in an expensive country.

My total budget for 12 months of continuous travelling would have been £20,000/ US $27,676.00. This would have given me the flexibility to maybe get a private room from time to time or travel more than the 12 months initially planned. I could have extended my sabbatical year only if I managed to cut the costs even lower than my monthly allowance of £1666/US $2300. I met travellers who have spent way less than that. However, as I said before this figure is only a starting point on figuring out a budget that suits your needs. For me, this figure would have given me the flexibility to cover last-minute emergencies and feel that I have enough to continue for the 12 months I originally planned for.

Yearly budget £20,000	Costs breakdown (approximative figures)
Monthly budget £1666	Accommodation £666 (40%)
	Transport £499 (30%)
	Food £249 (15%)
	Other costs £249 (15%)

Final Thoughts

The above budget is customisable and it depends on a lot of factors as I’ve explained above. However, these figures should be a good start for everyone wanting to know how much might cost to visit the most beautiful places on earth.

In conclusion, £20,000/ US $27,676.00 is my suggestion for a yearly budget if you plan to visit the most beautiful places on Earth in 12 months. The total figure can go down or up based on the factors we already looked at in this blog post. So what are you waiting for? When will you start planning your trip to visit the most beautiful places on Earth?