Booking our Venice Summer trip for less than £500

There is nothing I love more than planning and booking a trip away, so when the eldest said he wanted to go on a Venice summer trip to celebrate his 18th, the laptop was open and I was ready to start researching. This would be our first trip to Italy as a family, the eldest went on a school trip to Sicily a few years ago, and I was already dreaming of Italian Pizza and Gelato overlooking one of the canals.

Venice summer trip

With planning holidays I guess that everybody does it differently. Some people will book hotels first and then flights, some people might actually hate the planning, and just get a Travel Agent or family member to do it for them. Personally I love the planning, and with us going in the middle of August, I knew that I had some researching to do to get our trip at a pretty decent price.

Booking flights to Venice

easyJet is always going to be my preferred airline when travelling short haul. They have never let me down, and they were fantastic when we travelled with them to Amsterdam for the day last year. I always use the easyJet app when booking flights as it’s so easy to use, plus you can be checking flights whilst cooking the tea (as if I would do this).

At first glance the flights were coming in around £500 for the four of us, and that was for three days in Venice. Not too bad but I was determined to see if I could get them cheaper. I then found flights costing £281, it meant we had two nights in Venice, which would give us two full days in the city which I thought would be plenty. For £70pp return during the summer holidays, I thought this was a great price to pay and the flights were booked.

Booking accommodation in Venice

With the flights all booked, I was ready to start researching where to stay. I tend to start looking on booking.com, just to get an idea of prices of hotels in the city. I soon learned that Venice in the summer is expensive, and as our eldest would be 18, we would now need two rooms, doubling the cost infront of my eyes.

When we went to Amsterdam last year, we decided to stay away from the city as it was much cheaper to do this and then travel in, so I started looking at places away from the city centre. And the borough of Mestre kept popping up, connected to central Venice by road and rail. There were plenty of hotels to choose from, and I very nearly booked the Hilton Garden Inn for £400 for two rooms, two nights.

But something stopped me, I carried on looking and ended up booking the Staycity apartments, also in Mestre for £165 for two nights. Staycity do apartments for four people, and after checking with the kids they were fine to bunk in with us. I’m sure we will be using it just as a base, and I was pretty pleased with myself for saving £235 on the accommodation. The apartments are around a 5 minute walk to the train station, and then a 10 minute journey sees you in Venice Island.

So our summer trip to Venice is coming along nicely. The husband and eldest are going to come up with a plan for our two days in Venice, so if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them. I just need to book our airport parking at Manchester which is typically around £45, and start saving euros as I am sure Venice is going to be expensive to eat out.

But I am pretty pleased that I got the flights and accommodation for £446 during the summer holidays.