A 7-Day Family Holiday for £700: How to Actually Do It (2026)
A week away for two adults and two children on £700 is genuinely doable. That budget covers return flights from a UK regional airport plus seven nights of self-catering, as long as you pick a budget-friendly spot, travel just outside the school-holiday peak, and book it as a package. Food and days out come on top, but a kitchen and the right destination keep those small. Here is how the numbers work and where to point yourselves.
Everyone tells you a family holiday costs a fortune. Four sets of flights, a room big enough for everyone, eating out three times a day. It adds up fast and most people just accept the number.
It does not have to be that number. A week in the sun for two adults and two kids on around £700 is genuinely possible, and I am not talking about a tent in a field. You just have to make three or four decisions well instead of leaving it to a travel agent and a peak-season price.
What £700 actually buys
Let us be honest about the maths, because clickbait budgets help nobody.
Your £700 is realistically your return flights for four from a regional UK airport plus seven nights in a self-catering apartment. Hit a budget destination in a quieter week and that genuinely lands around the £700 mark, sometimes under.
What it does not include is food and days out. The trick is that a self-catering base keeps both small: breakfasts and a few dinners in the apartment, beaches and parks for the days, and you are spending a fraction of what a hotel-and-restaurants trip costs. Budget for maybe £200 to £300 of spending money on top and you have a full week away for four for under a grand.
Pick a destination that does the work for you
Where you go matters more than anything else. The same week costs wildly different amounts depending on the country.
The cheapest reliable options from the UK are the budget Mediterranean: the Spanish costas, the Algarve in Portugal, the Greek islands out of season, Bulgaria's Black Sea coast, and Turkey, which is outstanding value right now. All have short flights, warm seas, shallow family beaches and apartments by the thousand.
Avoid the obvious expensive traps: anywhere long-haul, the smart bits of the French and Italian rivieras, and anywhere that needs a hire car to function. A walkable resort with a beach and a supermarket is the budget family sweet spot.
Time it right, this is the real lever
For families this is the hard part. School-holiday weeks are when prices triple, and that is exactly when you are allowed to go.
Work the edges. The late-May half-term, the very start of the summer holidays and early September are dramatically cheaper than the first three weeks of August. October half-term to the southern Med still gets you warm sea at a fraction of the summer price. If you can only travel in peak August, book it stupidly early, like six to nine months out, because that is when the genuinely cheap package allocation goes.
The single biggest saving in family travel is moving your week by a fortnight. Same beach, same apartment, half the price.
Book it as a package, from your local airport
Booking flights and accommodation separately is usually how budgets blow up. Bundled together, they are cheaper and simpler.
Search flight-and-hotel packages on Trip.com and compare departures from every airport you can reach. Manchester, Birmingham, London and the Scottish airports often differ by a hundred pounds or more for the identical trip, so check all of them rather than defaulting to your nearest. A slightly longer drive to a cheaper airport can pay for a day of the holiday.
For the days out once you arrive, book through GetYourGuide rather than at the hotel desk, where the same trips cost more. A single well-chosen family activity, a boat trip or a water park, is usually enough alongside all the free beach days.
Self-cater, because food is where budgets die
A family of four eating out for a week is where a cheap holiday quietly becomes an expensive one. A kitchen changes the whole equation.
Do a supermarket shop on day one for breakfasts, snacks, drinks and a few easy dinners. Eat out for lunch when it is cheaper than dinner, or for the odd treat evening, not by default. Pack a cool bag for the beach so you are not buying four overpriced ice creams and a round of drinks every afternoon. None of it feels like hardship, and it is the difference between £700 and £1,200.
Free and nearly-free with kids
The best bits of a family holiday are usually the cheap ones. Beaches cost nothing. So do playgrounds, harbour walks, rock-pooling, markets and the pool at your apartment block. Most resorts have a free evening promenade where the whole town comes out and the kids run feral until late.
Pick one paid activity for the week, build the rest around what is free, and nobody feels short-changed. Children remember the beach and the pool, not the price of the day out.
Sort the boring money bits
Two small things save a surprising amount across a week of little payments. A fee-free travel card spends in euros or lira at the real exchange rate, so you are not quietly losing money on every supermarket shop and ice cream. And a cheap travel eSIM keeps you online for maps and bookings without a roaming bill, which matters more with kids in tow and plans that change by the hour.
The honest bottom line
£700 for a family week away is not a gimmick, but it is not luck either. It is a budget destination, a week just off peak, a package from the right airport and a kitchen instead of a restaurant. Get those four right and the sunshine costs about the same as a fortnight of after-school clubs. Get them wrong and the same trip is double. The choice really is yours.
