The Cost of Reality TV Holidays

As we were recently creating our TV and film holiday itineraries, we got thinking about some of the real-life trips we see on the small screen. It seems almost whenever we turn our TVs on, there’s another group of reality stars jetting away somewhere exotic. While we don’t envy them the public confrontations and frequent drinking-throwing, occasionally we’d like to try one of their luxurious trips abroad.

With this in mind, we’ve re-watched some vacation episodes of the most successful reality TV shows, totting up how much the holidays would cost per person and putting them into a list of most to least expensive. Safe to say that we won’t be affording most of these trips any time soon (but we might start squirrelling away some extra savings just in case…)

1. Made In Chelsea, Hvar, Croatia

Total cost per person: £45,022

Cost per person per day: £1,077.95

The MIC cast may be well-known for their extravagance and indulgence (their entire brand is built on it), but we were still surprised to see their summer getaway beat out the Kardashian’s most recent family vacation for the most expensive reality tv trip.

Summer 2018 saw the Chelsea London gang jet off to Croatia for a six-week jaunt in the sun. The entire cast spent that time living it up in luxury villas, which account for most of the costs they racked up.

Between the drama, drink-throwing and relationship disasters, the cast kept themselves entertained with frequent private yacht trips, high-end wine tastings, quad biking experiences – together with near constant eating out. All this resulted in them having the most expensive holiday of our reality TV trips (although they come second to the Kardashians in terms of per day costs).

2. Keeping up with the Kardashians, Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica

Total cost per person: £26,274.74

Cost per person per day: £6,568.68

The latest full Kardashian family holiday saw the cream of reality TV royalty (bar Kendall) jet off to Costa Rica in 2016. Although the overall per person cost of this holiday puts it at number two on this list, the trip only lasts four days, compared to Made in Chelsea’s eight-week trip. Per day, the Kardashian holiday is by far the most expensive, coming in at £6,568.68, more than six times what MIC’s stars racked up in Croatia.

One of the biggest expenses on the trip was the accommodation the family chose. Known for their luxurious tastes, that Kardashian clan didn’t disappoint when they rented out the whole of Villa Manzu for their getaway.

You can rent individual rooms in the villa, but of course, Kim K and her family opted to take the whole property – at a minimum cost of £12,829.99 a night. Additional accommodation costs were increased by the family’s one night stay at The Springs, at £1,500 per night.

Another large chunk of cash was splashed on transport. Not ones to be seen slumming it with us normal folk, the Kardashians chartered private jets and helicopters to get them from A to B throughout the trip.

As well as extravagant accommodation and transport, the family also splashed out on catering. The Kardashians did eat out during their trip, but most of their food appeared to be provided and cooked for them by private chefs, complete with waiting staff. This would have come to around £334.93 per person (just a drop in the ocean on this trip).

3. Love Island, Mallorca

Total cost per person: £15,274.23

Cost per person per day: £272.75

The sheer length of Love Island’s eight-week extravaganza is what pushed this holiday into third place on our price list. We costed up Love Island based on the price of an eight-week stay in Villa Alchemy, better known as Casa Amor (the original Love Island villa is not publicly available to rent).

Also included in this calculation are the prices of the dates 2018’s contestants went on throughout the series. From Jack and Dani’s sunrise hot air balloon ride to Laura and Pauls’ private dinner at Son Marroig, we’ve totted it all up.

The Love Island contestants are treated to lunch and dinner concocted by a private catering team each day they’re in the villa, pushing the cost up significantly.

But activities in the villa that actually cost money are few and far between. For this reason, per day costs for a Love Island holiday come in as the lowest on this list at just £272.75.

4. I’m a Celebrity, Gold Cost, Australia

Total cost per person: £13,392.25

Cost per person per day: £478.29

A lot of I’m a Celeb might have us watching through our fingers (especially during the Bushtucker Trials). But honestly, a fair bit of what the campmates get up to looks like fun, so we’ve costed up how much it would set you back to recreate your own I’m a Celebrity experience (with slightly fewer witchetty grubs).

We’ve included camping in the Gold Coast jungle in our calculations – albeit in better accommodation than the campmates – and a three week stay at the Palazzo Versace Hotel. This is the now iconic hotel that hosts evicted campmates and their families.

Even with a three-week stay in this five-star resort, the I’m a Celebrity holiday came in as the second least expensive – both overall and per day. Costs also include common jungle activities we see on the show such as jungle trekking, wild swimming, sky diving and helicopter rides.

We even managed to find a restaurant serving up gourmet insect delicacies to make up a slightly more refined Bushtucker Trial.

5. The Only Way is Essex, Barcelona, Spain

Total cost per person: £2,109.83

Cost per person per day: £703.27

TOWIE’s recent trip to Barcelona, which kicked off Season 22 of the show, comes in as the cheapest reality TV holiday by far. The trip was the shortest of those we researched, so this might not be a huge surprise, but despite being only a day shorter, the vacation came in at less than a tenth of the Kardashian’s Costa Rica trip.

Gemma Collins, Arg and the gang have the simplest tastes out of any of the reality TV stars we’ve featured, choosing more modest accommodation and travel options. Despite being the most sensible with their cash, TOWIE’s holiday is still way above what many of us would pay for a three-day, off-peak trip to Barcelona. Money is racked up by a few indulgent activities, inducing renting luxury cars and a VIP night at Barcelona’s Pacha nightclub.

Methodology

To find the data we’ve used in this piece, we watched the holiday episodes of each programme. Throughout, we kept note of where cast members stayed, what they ate and drank, how they travelled and what they did. We then researched how much each of these elements cost per person to come up with the amounts given in this blog post. All costs were taken from current prices and converted into Pound Sterling based on currency exchange rates on 19th November 2018.

Disclaimer: eShores is not associated with or connected to any of the celebrities or television programmes referred to and none of those celebrities or television programmes endorse eShores’ products or services.