Family holiday costs for the millions of Brits heading abroad every year can spiral and taking a sightseeing tour is often the best way to see all the main attractions in a city in one day. But the family holiday costs of taking a city tour bus can vary by as much as £129 depending on the destination, according to new research by travel money specialist Moneycorp.
Moneycorp looked at how much it would cost to take a sightseeing tour bus, to see all the sights in some of the most visited cities around the world. The research looked at the price of a day pass* for the top 20 global cities for an adult and a family of four. The results revealed not just a larger variation in price between the various destinations, but also in best value – which was calculated by how many attractions you see on a tour.
The most expensive sightseeing tour, by price alone, of the top 20 destinations was New York, where a day pass, for a family of four, costs an average of £142 – and that doesn’t include entry into any of the attractions. That compares with the cheapest destination, Delhi, where a sightseeing bus tour costs just £13 – a difference of almost £130. In contrast, a sightseeing tour of London’s favourite sights for a family of four, costs on average £84.
Paris was the most expensive city tour when calculated by cost per attraction. The tour of nine sights costs on average £26 for an adult. That works out at £2.83 per attraction, compared to 24 sights on the London bus tour, at a cost per attraction of £1.17.Delhi was by far the cheapest destination – with a tour for a family of four costing just £13, averaging at £0.19 per landmark, per person. And with sterling gaining over 4% against the Indian rupee over the past 12 months, it’s even better value.Berlin was the cheapest sightseeing bus tour in the Eurozone, costing just £37 for a family of four. However, the best value European sightseeing tour was Lisbon, in Portugal, costing £17 for one adult for 22 attractions, at a cost of £0.77 per attraction.
For tours that gave the best value for money, Delhi, Moscow, Singapore, Lisbon and Dublin all worked out at less than £1 per attraction. This means that although some were not the cheapest, for that added expense you get to see far more of each city’s famous landmarks.
Matthijs Boon, Moneycorp’s Director of Travel Money, comments: “The sightseeing tour bus has become part of the fabric of popular city destinations. For tourists on short breaks, it’s an easy and convenient way to see the main attractions in a day that a city has to offer.
“However, our research shows that not only is there a significant variation in cost between the most and least expensive city tours, but also the amount of attractions you get to see on those tours. For example the London sightseeing tour is jam-packed with sights, with a tour of the capital taking in 24 attractions for £28. That compares with just nine landmarks each on a sightseeing bus tour of Paris and Rome, costing just under £30 each.
“On price alone, sightseeing tours of US cities came out the most expensive, with a tour of New York costing a family of four £142, a tour of Los Angeles around £100 and Miami’s city tour averaging £97. That’s a significant outlay for a family, particularly if you then also have to pay to go into the attractions.“It’s always worth checking what the tour offers before committing to a sightseeing tour, to see how many of the sights you actually want to see. You may find you can easily cover all the main sights in a few days without paying for a tour.”
