Minion Monies: How much did my 2020 New Zealand & Asia Trip Cost?

The following will be an accounting of my 2020 trip to Australia, Singapore, Taiwan and New Zealand trip. If you’ve not read the blog, you can do so here. Or if you want a summary of the entire trip you can check that out here. It might provide some extra context to the costs below!

The Transportation ($1906.67 & 208,000 Points)

The Flights ($1076.90)

The “Complicated Booking” ($628.06 & 160,000 Aeroplan points)

As I mentioned in the planning post for this trip, a majority of my flights are booked under one Aeroplan reward booking. I’ll leave the intricacies of what went into building this itinerary for that post. Given the complicated nature of this flight, the original booking cost me 160,000 Aeroplan points and $334.16. About a month prior to the trip, I ended up making some significant changes to the itinerary which incurred an additional $52.40 taxes and fees and a $210 change fee. Between the time of my original booking and the time I actually flew each segment, a number of changes and adjustments were needed, which prompted more fee adjustments.

At the end of the day, these flights ended up costing $628.06 along with 160,000 Aeroplan points.

Qantas Perth (PER) to Sydney (SYD) to Auckland (AKL) and back ($276.94 & 48,000 Avios)

With my Aeroplan flight dropping me off in Perth and taking me home again in a few weeks, I used some of my British Airways Avios to book a return Qantas flight from Perth to Auckland with a weekend layover in Sydney (for the wedding). This cost me $276.94 and 48,000 Avios.

Intra-Island flights on Air New Zealand ($111.17)

For our flights between the North and South Island of New Zealand we flew with Air New Zealand. Since both flights are pretty short it didn’t actually cost us that much to fly. Both flights together cost us $222.34 (CAD after conversion). Because these prices are for both Gimpy and I, for simplicity I’ll simply divide this by 2 for an individual total of $111.17

Getting to Toronto ($60.73)

The only other flight that needed to be booked was the flight to get to the starting point of our trip, Toronto. For this I leveraged some of my Westjet dollars to buy a red eye flight departing Vancouver in the evening. All in this flight $60.73

The Cars ($651.51 & $178.26 in fuel)

I/we rented four cars over the course of the trip. For me personally, I did a rental for one night in Guam to go between the airport and my AirBnB. This first rental cost me $36.63 (Converted). We rented three cars in New Zealand. The first is when Gimpy, Suzy and I explored the North Island. This cost us $324.21 (Converted) or $108.07 individually. The second rental would be just Gimpy and I on the South Island. This cost us $337.87 (Converted) or $168.94 individually. And finally on our return to the North Island. This cost $143.37 or $71.69 Individually.

Gas for all four car rentals cost $411.52 or $178.26 individually.

Total Transportation Costs

Accommodations ($2131.68)

For a trip that spanned over 30 days, 4 countries and 2 continents, I think it probably saves everyone a little time if I don’t detail all the different places we/I stayed at. In summary we/I stayed at 10 AirBnB’s, 4 Hotels, 2 Hostels and a family friend’s home.

Because I did Singapore, Taiwan, Hawaii and Guam on my own, the total cost of these airBnB & Lodges came out to 1250.25

After doing some math the individual cost for our accommodations in New Zealand totaled $881.43. For an individual total of $2131.68

Total Accommodation Costs

Food and Beverage ($1500)

This one’s hard to tally up! Not only has it been two years since this trip occurred, many food places took cash. This makes it even harder to track. I also wasn’t really tracking food costs back then thinking I would be writing about it now!

So everything here will be an estimate. Generally things were relatively affordable while in Asia (Singapore and Taiwain) While most of my food transactions were in cash, I would estimate that most meals didn’t cost me more than $10 CAD (often times less). Seeing as I spent 8 full days in these two countries, I estimate my food costs are going to be around $240 CAD.

While in Australia, I only ended up helping pay for two meals. In both cases it was to thank our hosts for housing us for the weekend. While I don’t have the receipts for it, I’m going to estimate that it cost around 60$ CAD.

Finally, the most expensive food portion of our trip was in New Zealand. For the most part meals would run around $20-25 CAD. There were some days we would skip/miss a meal, and other days we would cook in our AirBNB in order to save some money. On the contrary there were other days we simply splurged on things like seafood platters. So being in New Zealand for 16 days, I’ll estimate this eating portion cost around $1200

Miscellaneous Expenses ($1398.72)

We ended up paying a fair amount for activities and tours. This would include things like Black Water Rafting, The Franz Josef Helihike, The Milford Sound Excursion, Hobbiton, The Auckland Wine Tour and the Rotorua Luge. With some more math, the individual cost for these activities totaled $1231.09

In addition to these activities, there were some activities that I don’t have an electronic receipt for but know required payment entry. These would include the Singapore Museum, The Cloud Forest and Flower Dome, The Canopy Park at Changi Jewel and Access to the tops of the Super Trees in Singapore. And Taipei 101 and the National Palace Museum. Altogether these activities cost around $110.99 (CAD)

There was also an additional cost of $38.34 and $18.30 (CAD) for New Zealand and Australian Travel Authority (respectively).

Altogether the miscellaneous costs comes out to $1398.72

Totals

If you add everything up:

We get a grand total trip cost of $6937.07. I intentionally attempted to ensure the costs are for an individual, so averaging it out over 33 days and its roughly $210.21 per day. Given how long I was away, I’m pretty happy with how the numbers worked out!

There is also a points cost of 208,000 points from Aeroplan and Avios. I’m not going to try and calculate a potential value for these points because these flights occurred in the past. And the travel industry is still up in the air coming out of the Pandemic, I wouldn’t feel right linking current day prices to it. Sufficed to say, I do feel like there was tremendous value in my flight redemption. Flying over 20 times most of which in Business class is pretty apparent value.

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!