New Zealand - $225.38 Per Day
New Zealand was our first real destination on our global journey across 2024 and a bit of 2025, and we really wanted to dive into the culture and environment that it had to show us. To make sure we had enough time here we spent 28 days across the North and South Islands, spending a total of $6,347 for a daily average of $225.38. Obviously, this is higher than our year-long daily target of $194 but we knew before we even got there that New Zealand was going to be one of our more expensive destinations. Our biggest share of expenses came from transportation & lodging, combining to cost $3,409. Some of this increased cost was down to us not being able to secure a camper van before they were all booked out, as we shared in our post around Planning a Trip Around the World, this is something you need to do ASAP when thinking about visiting a popular road-trip destination like New Zealand. As a result we still wanted the flexibility of having your own transportation but now had the added cost of needing to book either a hostel, hotel, or camping accommodation each night.
Food can also be quite expensive in New Zealand and even though we tried to limit the number of times we went out to eat, as well as the types of restaurants we ate at, we still spent $1,650 on food and groceries.
New Zealand is also well known for the huge array of activities and outdoor experiences on offer and we didn’t want to miss out on those near the top of our bucket list like the Routeburn Trek, a Milford Sound Cruise, and Hobbiton. All of these, plus a few smaller activities, added up to $727, a daily cost of about $25 across our four weeks in the country.
We had several more one-off transportation costs, like the ferry from the North Island to the South Island, and many miscellaneous expenses like laundry or parking during our time as well adding up to an additional cost of $16.80 per day averaged out over the four weeks.
Luckily we used AAdvantage points to fly to New Zealand from our starting destination, Thailand, on Fiji Airways and didn’t have any flights within New Zealand to worry about. The visa cost is also quite low with American, or many other nationalities, passports so we were able to eliminate these costs from our total budget for this stretch of our adventure.
You can read more about our time in New Zealand in our blog posts covering the North Island and South Island.