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I went to Hawaii in April 2021. I spent two thousand dollars for one week! Which yes, is way too much money. So I’m going to break down how much my trip to Hawaii cost and give you all my tips to help you avoid doing what I did. Learn what you can expect to pay in Hawaii. You can go to Hawaii for cheaper than me.
Don’t spend as much as I did!
Read more about how to save money while traveling and how to save money while planning a trip!
Read another budget breakdowns at home edition; what I spend in a week!
Table of Contents
Trip to Hawaii Cost – Expectation
How much would a trip to Hawaii cost?
Honestly I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into when deciding to go to Hawaii. I had no concept of how much a trip to Hawaii cost and how much I should expect to spend. One thing I knew for sure, it wasn’t going to be cheap. I was not wrong.
Before your trip, figure out what you want to do on the island. Budget your trip so you can prioritize the things that are important to you and actually get to do them.
If your main focus is sticking to a tight budget, I might take a step back from Hawaii. Going on vacation shouldn’t cause unnecessary stress about paying for the trip. Your vacation should be about relaxing and enjoying your life.
If you still want to go to Hawaii, then hopefully seeing everything I spent will help you get a better idea of what to expect and help you avoid unnecessary expenses!
Hawaii Vacation Costs: Breaking Down EVERYTHING We Spent | One week in Kauai, Hawaii
Pre-Travel Costs
Pre-Travel Costs represent everything we purchased before actually flying to Hawaii to enjoy our vacation. These costs are what we spent, in preparation for our trip.
Flight
$956 for two, $478 for one.
We took a direct flight with United from San Francisco to Lihue.
Accommodations
$731 for two, $366 for one.
This number is not a good representation of accommodation prices in Hawaii, let me explain.
Hotel: $641 – minus $500 credit, $141 for two, $71 for two (2 Nights)
Airbnb: $590 for two, $295 for one (3 Nights)
Condo: $0 (2 Nights)
The total price that we SHOULD HAVE paid for accommodations is $1,231. However, my job has a Wellness Benefit that allows me to use points for travel rewards. We were able to get a $500 dollar gift card to Hotels.com which saved us a lot of money.
Additionally, the condo. My mom was generous enough to let us borrow her timeshare while on our trip, so we did not have to pay anything for the two nights we were there!
If you’re wondering why we didn’t just use the condo for the entire week and spend zero on accommodations…. Well we should have. Or at least spend more time there. We justified it by saying it was our first time in Hawaii as adults and we wanted the big luxury hotel experience.
We bounced around a lot because we wanted to get to know the different sides of the island. Although Kauai is a small island, we didn’t want to have to drive an hour everyday to get to wherever we wanted to go.
I have more tips on how to find cheap accommodations and cheap lodging below. But if you’re extra eager and want an ENTIRE POST dedicated to finding cheap lodging, here you go!
Transportation
$509 for two, $255 for one.
Car Rental: $419 for two, $210 for one.
Covid Test: $40 for two, $20 for one.
We traveled in April 2021, Kauai had just become a member in Hawaii’s Safe Travel Program. This entails getting a negative covid test result within 72 hours of flying.
You do not need to pay for a covid test, the Hawaii Safe Travel Program has many partners that you can use to get a test. However, I was worried we wouldn’t receive the results back in time (don’t read the reddit horror stories!) so we decided to pay $20 each to ensure we’d get results within 24 hours.
Activities
$689 for two, $345 for one.
This is what we consider our “crazy” expense of the trip. We booked a private tour, no door helicopter tour around Kauai. More on that later!
On the Trip Costs
On the trip costs account for all of the expenses we had while physically being in Hawaii.
Transportation
$50 for two, $25 for one.
We rented a car for the week. Although we drove around the entire island we only used one tank of gas that cost us $50 to fill back up.
Activities
$154 for two, $77 for one.
Waimea Canyon State Park Parking Pass: $10 for two, $5 for one.
Kayak: $111 for two, $55 for one.
Bikes: $32 for two, $16 for one.
The Waimea Canyon State Park parking pass was for one vehicle, the entire day and parking in any lookout point in the State Park. So if you are traveling with more than 2 people it will remain at 10 dollars as long as you’re all in one car.
There is a popular waterfall called the Uluwehi Falls (aka Secret Falls). This hike requires you to kayak up the Wailua river for about 1.8 miles and then do a short hike to the waterfall. We rented a two person Kayak for $111.
Lastly, Kauai has a 4 miles paved path along the beach called Ke Ala Hele Makalae Path. You can rent a bike for two hours for $15 dollars each.
Food
$906 for two, $453 for one.
Groceries: $66 for two, $33 for one.
Eating Out: $840 for two, $420 for one.
Total Trip to Hawaii Cost
$3,945 for two, $1,972 for one.
(P.S. If you think these charts and graphs are cute, I pulled them from my travel budget template for google sheets! You can get it, for free, might I add, just click here. I got you!)
Tips to Make YOUR Hawaii Vacation Cheaper Than Mine
Flights
If you want to score a cheap flight to Hawaii you need to try and go in the off season. The off season for Hawaii is around mid April to early June and September to November. If you travel to Hawaii outside of those months, you can expect resorts to be booked at full capacity and prices to be very exaggerated.
You can track flights on Google Flights or if you’re subscribed to services like Scott’s Cheap Flights or FareDrop they will let you know when the prices have dropped.
You can also look into Costco Hawaii Packages. Sometimes you can get a great flight price and cheaper accommodations from buying a package.
Accommodations
Accommodations in Hawaii have a big price range depending on what type of stay you’re looking for. According to the Hawaii Tourism Authority for 2019 (didn’t do 2020 since that data is skewed) the average price of a hotel per night is about $281.
These prices will also vary by island.
If you are looking for a luxury hotel experience but don’t want to pay the price it can be done! Priceline.com and similar websites have something called “express deals”.
They will find you hotels and condos that have MAJOR discounts. You get to see some pictures, how many stars the hotel has and the ratings they received from Tripadvisor.
The catch. They don’t tell you what hotel it is until after you’ve booked it.
If you’re pretty savvy on the internet and do some research on which hotels are in the area, you can have a pretty good guess as to which property you’re getting. Once you’ve clicked into the deal you want, they give you some basic information which can help you guess which hotel the deal is for.
You can also filter your search depending on what specific hotels/condos you’re looking for. They have a crazy amount of deals so I’m sure you’ll be able to find something that works for you!
For a more in depth, step by step guide to finding cheap lodging options check out this post!
Transportation
Typically when talking about travel and transportation, my advice would be to exclusively use public transit. Hawaii is the only location I’ve been to where I’ve rented a car and would strongly encourage others to as well. Unless you are planning to stay at your hotel the entire time, a car is pretty essential to get you around the entire island.
I booked a car with Dollar Car Rental three weeks in advance, which if you are traveling to Hawaii in 2021, car rentals are a hot commodity so I would recommend booking a car as a first priority. I thought our price of around $400 for the week (8 days) wasn’t bad but after talking to some other tourists while on the trip I realized there are much cheaper options.
Don’t rent your car from the airport.
Although this might cause a bit of a headache having to shuttle or uber/lyft from the airport, you can find a car for about $250 a week if you exclusively call around to local companies instead of the bigger corporations at the airport.
Lastly, a lot of resorts offer airport shuttles, you may get lucky and not even need an uber/lyft!
Activities
There are SO MANY free activities you can do while in Hawaii. Spending money in this category is not necessary at all, if you don’t want to.
No matter which Hawaiian island you go to, you will be able to find endless amounts of hikes, waterfalls, beaches and scenic drives. If you are on a hard budget, it is not unrealistic to spend $0 for activities.
That being said, I think you should consider your priorities for the trip and not automatically rule out paid activities. It’s ok to want to do a boat tour to some caves or some hard to reach snorkel destinations. There are several tours and excursions for only $100 and they typically include dinner.
If you did want to splurge on one activity, I would highly recommend a helicopter tour.
Helicopter Tours
There are many different types of helicopter tours at varying price points. I can’t speak for the rest of the islands but on Kauai, there are two main helicopter tour companies, Jack Harter and Mauna Loa.
Jack Harter
Jack Harter offers two different tours. The Doors Off Experience which costs $309 per person and the Luxury Experience which costs $289 per person. You get to see basically the same thing for the same amount of time, the only difference is one helicopter doesn’t have doors and one does.
Mauna Loa
Mauna Loa offers two tours as well. Number one, the Kauai Experience, which is their equivalent of the Doors Off Experience, for $325. Number two, the Kauai Pro Photography Flight for $350 which is specifically for professional photographers who want beautiful Kauai photos.
The Kauai Experience tour is more expensive than the Jack Harter Doors Off Experience tour because it is only for 2-3 people (aka a private party), however the Jack Harter tour is for up to four.
The reason we chose the Kauai Experience tour with Mouna Loa was to guarantee we would be the only two passengers. Because we traveled during covid we wanted some separation from other tourists and we wanted to guarantee both of us get the best views!
If you still want to see Kauai from the air but are looking for something even more affordable, there are tours in small aircraft that start from $145.
Although this activity is very expensive it was an unforgettable experience and one of the highlights of the trip. If you have the means, I would encourage you to budget for this and include a helicopter tour as part of your vacation!
Food
As you can see, we spent A LOT of money on food. Although there are many expensive options, there are also many affordable options.
If you want a very low-budget Hawaii trip, you can go to the grocery store and make food at your accommodations as long as they have a kitchen available. Although this is perfectly ok, I believe one of the biggest aspects of travel is eating food. If you’re going to cook at home every meal, I’d try to at least go out 2 or 3 times during your stay. There are some incredibly tasty options and you don’t want to fly all the way there to not get a taste.
Cost of Food in Hawaii – By Meal
Breakfast:
We only had breakfast on the island twice and that accounted for 64 dollars!!! That is SO MUCH for breakfast.
Both of these times we had acai bowls which were around 12-15 dollars each. I think this is way too much for an acai bowl. For the remainder of the trip we made breakfast and coffee at our accommodations.
Every place we stayed (hotel, airbnb, condo) all provided coffee makers and the hotel included coffee beans. We took the unused beans from the hotel with us and used them for the duration of our trip.
My recommendation is you go to a grocery store for breakfast and maybe get one acai bowl if you want to try it.
Lunch
My favorite meals on the island were at lunch and they were all very cheap. For lunch we would either eat poke or go to Happy Hour and get whatever bar food was on sale.
Warning against happy hours. Although happy hours have discounts on food, I found all the food we ate at these were mediocre, and still relatively expensive. Additionally, you’ll most likely order a drink, which makes the bill way more expensive.
I suggest you stick to the “markets”. For Kauai specifically, places like Pono Market in Kappa have a large variety of food, meaning there are delicious options that aren’t just poke. We went here twice and spent about 10 dollars each time.
My all time favorite poke, however, was from Koloa Fish Market in Poipu. Slightly more expensive than Pono Market at 17 dollars each but I thought it was worth every penny.
Lastly, we didn’t end up eating lunch everyday. This was not on purpose. After doing a long hike, the day got late and we found ourselves having a very large early dinner instead of a late lunch and then even later dinner.
Part of our grocery store trip was buying a lot of snacks, which we enjoyed during our hikes and we had leftovers from dinner several times.
Dinner
Dinner is where it got expensive, for us.
Taking out our three fancier meals where we got drinks and dessert our average dinner price was $44 ($22 each). Coming from the Bay Area, this price was slightly cheaper than I expected.
Luaus. We did not go to a luau on our trip. Due to Covid there wasn’t many luaus happening. I’d be open to going in the future but I read they are about 100-150 per person and I’m not sure how worth it it is.
Additionally, our big fancy dinner for the trip was at Hukilau Lanai and we paid $134 ($67 each). This might seem rather expensive but considering the excellent service and experience it was much cheaper than something of that caliber in San Francisco.
We ordered two appetisers, two drinks each, one entree that came with a soup, and dessert. We were both stuffed and had leftovers to eat the next day. So all in all, a crap ton of food with a great ambiance and way cheaper than a luau.
If you want to keep it very cheap, I would normally recommend sticking to more “lunch” vibe spots, however in Kauai, most lunch places seemed to close between 2pm and 4pm.
You should expect to pay about $20 to $25 dollars a person not including beverages.
Drinks
Drinks are expensive. No way around that.
Even during happy hours, the cheapest drink we purchased was $8 but most happy hours were $10 drinks, which is not cheap in the slightest.
We bought some beer at the grocery store and would enjoy this at our accommodations after dinner.
The Ideal Hawaii (Kauai) Food Budget
Very Low Range Hawaii Budget: $100 to $150 per person
Mid-Range Hawaii Budget: $300 to $350 per person
The low range budget assumes you are doing almost all your cooking at home and going out to eat between 2-4 times. Like I said before, I don’t necessarily recommend this because I think such a big part of travel is the food. But it is doable if that’s what works best for you!
The mid-range budget is what I think you should aim for. Food bills can stack up fast but I think this range is very doable.
The mid range budget accounts:
- Grocery store trip where you can buy breakfast food, some drinks and snacks
- A breakfast / acai bowl outing
- Lunch everyday for about 12 dollars
- Dinner everyday for about 20 dollars
- One fancy dinner for about 70 dollars
- Drinks for between 20-40 dollars.
If you don’t drink, your Hawaii trip instantly gets much cheaper.
Final Thoughts
That’s everything I spent on my Hawaii vacation and all my tips to help you go to Hawaii for cheaper than I did!
To be completely honest, Hawaii isn’t the most budget friendly destination. If you’re looking for a beach vacation with a low price I would recommend looking for other destinations such as Mexico or Southeast Asia instead of Hawaii.
That being said, there are of course ways to make your trip to Hawaii cost less, but Hawaii is inherently going to be more expensive than other places.
I budget my trips so I can actually do the things I want and spend more in those areas, for me this was obviously eating and the helicopter tour. While cutting back in the areas that aren’t the most important for me, meaning no luxury hotel accommodations or a top down car rental.
Figure out what YOU want to do. Cut back in other areas you don’t care as much about.
Let me know if you used any of these tips and what you did in Hawaii!
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