Enjoying a luxury vacation will be expensive in any case. However, this doesn’t mean you should be giving away a part of your money to banks or other financial businesses that you’ll need to use to transfer money and actually pay for your holiday. Choose the right kind of money transfer company and you’ll be able to make your special trip a few thousand cheaper.
The Cost of Luxury: Average Prices from Top Destinations & Your FX Losses
If you want to relax in the lap of luxury, you need to have a hefty bank account to fund your vacation. According to the data from TripAdvisor, average hotel room prices for an overnight stay at some the hottest vacation destinations are:
- Aspen – $2,021
- Cayman Islands – $1,767
- Sicily – $1,398
- Amalfi Coast – $1,381
- Bora Bora – $1,364
- Turks & Caicos – $1,248
- Tokyo – $1,238
Of course, prices for special suites at the most luxurious hotels in the world are much higher than that, and the same goes for resorts.
Don’t forget to add the price of the tickets, car rentals, and other services you might need. Those special bucket list worthy experiences that make many luxury trips so fantastic also don’t come cheap. And, of course, there are shopping and fine dining to be included in your expenses as well.
Overall, the cost of even a week-long luxury vacation for two can cost anything between $20,000 and billions (if you plan to be really extravagant). And you’ll need to transfer a big part of this money to pay for some of the services beforehand. Unfortunately, this means that you will lose several thousand in fees and unfavorable currency exchange rates.
Now, some might claim that if one has the money to pay for a luxury vacation, they can afford to pay the transfer fees. However, you didn’t get where you are in life by wasting money, did you?
People who can afford such trips can do this exactly because they know how to make and manage their money well. This means that you shouldn’t be overpaying for services that can be much more affordable and even more efficient.
What Is the Best Way to Pay for Your Luxury Vacation?
In order not to waste money paying fees that you really shouldn’t have to cover out of your own pocket, you’ll need to use the best way to pay for your vacation. This means that you should use a money transfer company instead of the “traditional” methods like credit cards or PayPal. The reasons for this become obvious when you look at those services closely and do some simple calculations.
- Credit cards.
Credit cards have fees upon fees and that’s before you even start thinking about how much money the card company is taking from you for foreign currency exchange. Did you know that banks in some countries convert your payment several times, which means you are losing money for each? For example, they might require to convert your currency to US dollars first and only then to the currency of the country you need to send the payment to. Considering the fact that such companies always use unfavorable currency exchange rates, you will lose a huge amount of money from such transaction, even if your money only goes through one conversion. The more money you need to send, the higher your losses would be. And you also shouldn’t forget about foreign transaction fees that are still charged by some credit card companies. They make using a credit card abroad too expensive by default. - PayPal seems like a great tool for transferring money overseas, but that thought lasts only until you research its payment terms and coverage further. First of all, many businesses do not accept PayPal payments. Therefore, you won’t be able to use it at all. Even if the option is open, you need to remember that PayPal’s fees are worse than those of some credit card companies’.
As you can see, these methods of making international payments are rather inefficient and definitely expensive. Therefore, it’s no wonder that the demand for cheaper and better tools had arisen, and it resulted in the creation of online money transfer companies.
These services, like OFX, Currencies Direct, WorldFirst, MoneyCorp, and many others, are dedicated to making overseas money transfers fast, secure, and affordable. In order to achieve this, they use advanced tech solutions and mid-market currency exchange rates. As a result, you get an opportunity to make a payment of any size by tapping on your smartphone screen a few times. Top companies use bank-grade encryption, so your data is as safe as it was with your bank. And the currency exchange rate is the lowest you can get at any given moment. Note that if you are quick enough, you can use one of the hedging tools offered by these companies that will allow you to secure the lowest possible exchange rate.