Family Trip to Paris on a Budget: Trip Cost & Tips
Is it possible to do a family trip to France on a budget? We think so! Our family headed to France to celebrate my youngest Tanner’s high school graduation this summer. We booked this trip six weeks out. We used the following methods to save big on the trip. This was my 3rd trip to Paris and my son’s 2nd. You can read about the flights I booked and the hotels here.
Family Trip to Paris: Our Tips and Tricks:
This was a big trip for our family of four. I started booking this trip after realizing that the trip to Prague I booked for our entire family was booked for the wrong week. You can read about that here.
Flights
We used points and miles to fly our family of four to Paris from Nashville. We had to pay taxes and fees on the tickets. Our out-of-pocket for the flights was around $1200. I then paid extra to upgrade our seats to Comfort Plus. We are flying Delta, but used Flying Blue miles (Air France/KLM) to purchase the significantly cheaper tickets. If you want to learn more about how to do this, click here.
2. Hotels
We stayed at 3 different hotels on this trip. We needed 2 hotel rooms at each location. We were able to book the hotel in Rouen with Hyatt Points. Next, we headed to Caen. We could not find a hotel with any of the points I collected. So we are paying for this with a credit card. We booked our stay at the Hotel LaFontaine Caen City Centre. The two nights for two rooms and breakfast were around $600. After Caen, we returned to Paris to stay for two nights. We stayed at the Hilton Paris Opera. This hotel was around $1600 for two nights. Thanks to our diamond status with Hilton, we had access to their executive lounge. We used our Hilton Aspire card for this stay. For our stay, we will get Hilton points. We also receive them for using our Hilton Aspire Card. We will also get a 10,000-point bonus. I contacted American Express when my credit card annual fee hit to see if there was a retention offer. I was offered 10,000 points for $1,000 spend in 3 months. I estimate we will have to pay less than $2200 for hotels on this trip. This will include several meals, which add up fast when traveling with 3 men.
Hilton Paris Opera House
3. TOURS
We booked our tours in Caen and Bayeux with Viator. I like Viator because you can book and pay later. After I booked these tours, I saw them on my cardpointers app. I had American Express offers. I used 2 different American Express offers and saved $50 on each tour. I love saving money on things I am buying anyway. I just went into my reservation and changed the credit card on file for each. This ended up saving us $100.
4. AIRPORT LOUNGES
Last but not least, we used the Delta Lounge in Nashville pre-flight. We have the American Express Platinum card. We can use it at the Delta lounge if we are flying Delta, as long as we do not have a basic economy ticket. We visited lounges in Nashville and Atlanta on the way to Paris. I don’t recommend the American Express Platinum card for people who do not travel often. However, we do. I have to pay $195 extra per person in my family to have their card. Yikes! However, on this trip alone, we saved $150 a person on lounge access. Everyone in our family travels often! If you aren’t familiar with airport lounges, they are a great place to relax between flights and have free food and drinks. Feeding a family of 4 at an airport is super expensive. In the long run, this saves us money.
Our trip to France was amazing. Check out our itinerary here.
Check out these other posts about our trip:
