The following will be an accounting of my 2019 trip to Hawaii. If you’ve not read the blog, you can do so here. It might provide some extra context to the costs below!
The Transportation ($699.67)
The Flights ($414.52)
To get to Hawaii, I booked a round trip Flight on Westjet between Vancouver and Honolulu. Everything is pretty straightforward for this one as we only had one set of flights to book. So this flight cost $414.52, which to me, represents good value for flights to Hawaii.
The Cars ($224.95)
To get around Oahu, we ended up renting two cars since there are 6 of us on this trip. The first car is your standard economy sized sedan, while we decided to splurge a little on the second car and ended up getting a Jeep Wrangler. We probably thought it was the “cool” thing to do in getting the jeep, but we found it a bit unwieldy in the city. Sadly we really didn’t end up using it to its full potential, so it might have been a miss on our part in terms of the splurge. The car and jeep rentals (after currency conversion) work out to be $75.45 and $149.50 per person respectively.
Getting Around and other costs ($60.20)
Gassing up the cars cost us $19.40 individually split across both cars.
Once we got into the city of Honolulu, finding parking got more difficult, so in a few cases we opted to use some ride share services to get around Waikiki. After adding up the rides and splitting amongst our party, each person paid $40.80.
Total Transportation Costs
| Airfare | $414.52 |
| Car Rental | + $224.95 |
| Ride Share & Gas | + $60.20 |
| Total | = $699.67 |
Accommodations ($311.15)
We had two locations booked on this trip. One in the northern part of Oahu and one in Waikiki. One of the challenges (especially in Waikiki) is finding a location that could house six of us.
In the north we found a wonderful spot in Haleiwa in a newly renovated airBNB right by the beach. The location is unbeatable and I suspect that because it was so new, the owners were letting it rent for lower than normal to build up their reviews. Nonetheless we weren’t complaining. After currency conversion it worked out to be $434.15 CAD per person.
Our second spot was in the middle of Waikiki, it’s a two bedroom condo that included a foldaway bed and a bunk bed. While fairly spacious, when you fit six people in it, it did get a little cramped. Though given the number in our party we really can’t be too picky and it worked out to be around $306.69 CAD per person. (We did have to a bit of fancy math with Cactoose and FunkyCat leaving at different times).
Total Accommodation Costs
| Haleiwa AirBnB | $434.15 |
| Waikiki AirBnB | $306.69 |
| Total | = $740.84 |
Food and Beverage ($600)
The one thing about Hawaii is that food isn’t that cheap. There are lots of options but given there is such a big tourist industry here, a lot of things come at a premium. While I no longer have all my food receipts, I would guess that were were probably paying an average of $20 CAD a meal. So over the course of the nine days, we probably averaged around $600 for the entire trip. Obviously some days we would skip a meal or two, while other days we would spend a bit more on snacks and a variety of meals.
Miscellaneous Expenses ($496.88)
There are a few miscellaneous expenses to account for. The first is paying for the skydiving experience we had with Skydive Hawaii. This is one of my most memorable moments and while expensive, well worth it in my opinion. The dive itself costs $250 USD. Maybe it’s the adrenaline rush, or I really just enjoyed it that much, but I also ended up opting to get the video that they took as well. This set me back another $100 USD. Altogether this works out to be around $337 CAD.
The other major miscellaneous expense was for our shark cage experience. While its neat to do, being in the water has never been my favorite thing to do. So having done it once, I’m happy to have done it, but probably wouldn’t opt to pay for it again. Per person this cost each of us $129.93 CAD.
The only other miscellaneous expense would be the purchase of a roaming sim card for my time there. At the time the SIMwas provided by a company called Roam Mobility. However, they are no longer operating. This SIM card cost me $29.95
Totals
If you add everything up:
| Transportation | $699.67 |
| Accommodations | + $740.84 |
| Food & Beverage | + $600 |
| Miscellaneous | + $496.88 |
| Total | = $2537.39 |
We get a grand total trip cost of $2537.39. Averaging this out over 9 days we get $281.93 per day.
I would say that the cost per day is a bit on the high side. However, I think there are a few factors that inflate this number. The first is that we did participate in two fairly expensive activities in the form of skydiving and shark diving. The second is that food in general is more expensive in Hawaii, I have a sneaking suspicion that I may have over estimated the cost, or the number of meals we actually had at that cost. But it’s probably better to overestimate than underestimate in this case.
Hopefully if you’re still reading to this point you find this helpful! If there is extra information you’d like to know, or have suggestions on how this can be done better, please feel free to drop a comment below and let me know!