What is the Trip Budget Calculator?
The Trip Budget Calculator helps you estimate the total cost of a vacation or business trip before you book. Instead of guessing, you break your spending into the four categories that dominate any travel budget — transport, lodging, food, and activities — and the tool adds them up into a single, realistic total. It also breaks that total down per traveler and per day so you can sanity-check whether the trip fits your budget.
How to use it
Enter your one-off transport or flight cost, your lodging price per night along with the number of nights, your food spend per day along with the number of days, and any lump sum for activities, tours, or souvenirs. Add the number of travelers to see the cost per person. Press calculate and you'll get the total plus a category-by-category breakdown.
The formula explained
The math is simple addition with two multiplications:
$$\text{Total} = \text{Transport} + (\text{Lodging} \times \text{Nights}) + (\text{Food} \times \text{Days}) + \text{Activities}$$
Lodging is multiplied by nights because hotels charge per night, while food is multiplied by days because you eat every day you're away — these counts often differ by one (e.g. 6 days but 5 nights). Per-person cost divides the total by the number of travelers.
Worked example
Suppose flights cost $400, a hotel is $120 per night for 5 nights, food runs $50 per day for 6 days, and activities total $200, split between 2 travelers.
$$\text{Total} = 400 + (120 \times 5) + (50 \times 6) + 200 = 400 + 600 + 300 + 200 = \mathbf{\$1{,}500}$$ Per traveler that's $750, and per day it's $250.
FAQ
Should I count nights or days for lodging? Use nights for lodging — a trip that spans 6 calendar days usually has only 5 hotel nights.
What goes in "activities / other"? Any lump-sum spending: tours, tickets, car rental, travel insurance, souvenirs, and a contingency buffer.
Does this include currency conversion? No. Enter all values in a single currency; the calculator simply sums the numbers you provide.
