Seven Ways We’re Saving Money On A Trip To Italy

There’s a bit of a story behind mine and my friend’s spontaneous booking to go to Turin in Italy next March. We’re huge Tim Burton fans and have been keeping an eye on the locations of the World of Tim Burton ever since it opened a decade ago. The exhibition travels to a new location every six months or so and we kept missing the European destinations. Every time we checked it was in Japan or Mexico, or somewhere too far for us to go. So when I checked a month or so ago and saw it was due to be in Turin from October 23 until April 24 I wasted no time messaging my friend. We could only afford to go if we kept costs down so saving money on a trip to Italy was top on my agenda.

After pricing it all up and we ended up booking to go next March, and I am so excited. Here’s how we’re doing the trip budget friend.

Saving money on a trip to Italy, starting with the flights

I have super limited holiday left at work for 2024, so knew I could only afford to take one day off. That left us with a Friday- Sunday or a Saturday- Monday. As we were pretty flexible I browsed pretty much every weekend to find the best price. And being flexible really paid off, we ended up finding return flights with Easyjet for just £61 each. If we couldn’t find cheap flights to Turin I’d have been tempted to fly elsewhere in Italy and hire a car from Auto Europe, but thankfully we didn’t need to do that.

The other way we’re keeping prices down is only taking hand luggage. And I’m not taking a mini suitcase hand luggage, I’m talking about under-the-seat hand luggage. Things seem to have changed a lot since I last flew Easyjet as I don’t remember having to pay for any hand luggage, but that’s how it works now.

So we won’t be able to take much with us, but in reality, we really don’t need that much. Saving money on our trip to Italy is worth it, so we’ll be packing really thoughtfully and lightly.

Flexibility with accommodation

Accommodation is the other biggest expense when travelling so we were super flexible in terms of location and what we picked.

All we knew is we wanted to be in Turin even if we were outside the city centre, and we wanted a hotel as opposed to an apartment. I always tend to use booking.com as I sometimes get discounts with them as I’m a regular customer, but also they do a lot of book-now pay-later deals. Now it is usually cheaper overall to pay outright, but paying when you arrive allows you time to save. We picked this option as it was a spontaneous trip and neither of us had money saved for the hotel.

We’re all for saving money on a trip to Italy but we did still want somewhere rated clean and safe. In the end, we opted for a hotel that’s costing us £98 each for a two-night stay.

Saving money on a trip to Italy with pre-paid breakfast

One of the reasons we wanted a hotel was to find one with the breakfast price included. When on a budget you can fill up with a big meal at breakfast and then only need to eat one more meal later in the day.

When me and the same friend were in Norway we would take a few bits from breakfast to have as snacks during the day such as rolls and fruit. If we only have to buy one meal a day then it will save us a lot of money.

Other things we’re going to do to save money:

• Take our own water bottles to fill up when we’re going out
• Taking tea bags so we can make hot drinks to take out with us
• Looking fo restaurants/ places to eat outside of the main city centre or tourist area
• Pre-booking our Tim Burton exhibition tickets as they’re cheaper to get in advance

What do you think about the ways I’m saving money on a trip to Italy? Is there anything I’ve missed?