Where to find the cheapest European city break
Lisbon has emerged as the cheapest city in Western Europe, according to the latest Post Office Travel Money City Costs Barometer.
The barometer looks at the costs of meals, drinks, two nights’ three-star weekend accommodation, sightseeing and transport costs in a number of key city break destinations.
A drop in hotel costs helped Lisbon move two places up the barometer table into sixth position at £135, making the Portuguese capital the cheapest city in Western Europe.
It overtakes Athens (£149), which falls to 10th place.
Prices in Dubrovnik fell 2.3% to £137, putting the Croatian city in seventh place.
All of the other cities in the cheapest top 10 list are in Eastern Europe, topped by Warsaw, one of 10 new cities surveyed for the eighth annual report.
At £113 for 12 typical city break items, prices in the Polish capital are almost a third of those in Europe’s most expensive city, Stockholm (£325).
Although costs rose 15% in last year’s cheapest city, Vilnius (£115) it came a close runner-up this year, ahead of third-placed Budapest (£123) and Latvian capital Riga (£132) in fourth place.
Meanwhile, Krakow (£133) has moved up to fifth position, thanks to an 8.5% price fall.
But the weakening of the pound means prices have gone up in 80% of cities.
Rising hotel prices helped push up costs by 28% in Dublin (£306), while prices have risen 15.2% in Barcelona (£280), 17.2% in Vienna (£217) and 17.5% in Venice (£283) – as well as by 21.6% in Tallinn (£160), the largest increase in Eastern Europe.
Andrew Brown of Post Office Travel Money said: "Our research found wide variations in costs between cities and those people who are prepared to swap can make their pounds stretch further by choosing a cheaper capital like Warsaw in the east or Lisbon in the west."
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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