Wowcher Mystery Holiday – How Much It Actually Cost!

Back in January 2020, yes a lifetime ago, my mum and I embarked on a Wowcher Mystery Holiday. I paid for the holiday the previous August as a birthday gift for my mum. We finally got the call in September telling us where we were going and the dates. Incredibly by chance, we got assigned Venice, a place which had been at the top of my mum’s bucket list for decades and we were travelling the weekend before her birthday 😱. It couldn’t have worked out better!!

I wrote a full review back in 2020, weighing up whether it is actually worth it for the £99 price point. To follow on, in this post I will break down exactly how much I spent on the Wowcher Mystery Holiday. Spoiler alert: it was not £99.

What Are You Talking About?

You might have clicked on this and have absolutely no idea what I am talking about. Do not despair, I will explain.

The discount company Wowcher, offer a mystery holiday deal where you pay £99 and get randomly assigned a holiday destination. The destinations are extensive and include a range of both long and short haul getaways. So you could be assigned 7 nights in Phuket, Thailand or you could get 2 nights in a European city. It is a complete mystery – hence the name!

Now £99 sounds too good to be true, right!! Entering this post – exactly how much it did cost.

Don’t Forget The Small Print

The Wowcher Mystery Holiday’s are advertised as £99 but right off the bat you pay double that. It is £99 per person however the deal is only valid if you book for 2 people or more, therefore in reality it’s £198. And that’s before taxes and charges. So instead of £99, I paid £203 to get this deal!

So before we’ve even left the house we’ve already spent more than doubled the quoted price.

The Extras

As expected, the flights you are booked on are the cheapest ones available, often from the budget airlines. Therefore, the “£99” does not include luggage or seats. We ended up paying for one cabin bag (which we shared) but decided not to bother with seats. However, it still cost us £24 to get one cabin bag – crazy!! So our new total is £227 and we still haven’t left the house yet 😅

Your Location Is Not Taken Into Account

One of the best things about this deal is the mystery aspect, not knowing where you are going is what makes it exciting. However, remember that the people planning your trip do not know you. They do not know where you live. Therefore, you could be flying out from anywhere in the UK. Yes ANYWHERE!!!!*

*This has slightly changed since I went and now you only fly from one of the London airports – still not great if don’t live in London!*

We were lucky-ish that we got assigned flights from an airport about 3 hours from our house. Even more lucky that the airport in question (London Stanstead) has decent parking which can be paid for using Tesco vouchers – which we had a mini-stockpile of 🤩

This means that, other than petrol, we ultimately we did not have to factor this cost in but it is something to bear in mind when booking a Wowcher holiday. However, one thing I did have to pay for was getting home because whilst Stanstead is only 3 hours south of where my parents live, I live a further 2 hours north. I paid £10.65 in train fare to get home the day before we left on the trip.

Transfers

Just like getting to the airport in the UK, you also have to get from the airport you fly into to your accommodation. The cost of this will depend on where you get assigned and unfortunately is not something you can plan until you know.

For our trip, we paid £12.67 each for return bus tickets from airport in Venice to the area we were staying in. So that’s an additional £25.35 added to the total.

Activities

My mum and I were very content with simply sight seeing for the two days we had in Venice. However, the accommodation booked for us was not actually on Venice island, rather on the mainland. Therefore, we decided to buy transportation passes that would allow us to get onto the island each day and use the extensive water taxi service across both days. These came to £25.35 each, so an additional £50.70 added to the total.

Getting these passes was actually so worth it! As we could not only explore Venice faster but we could also explore all the little islands off Venice. Our favourites were Burano and Murano.

Food & Drink

Across the two and a half days, we spent a total of £131 on food and drinks. This includes snacks and drinks at the airport on the way out. Whilst it could have been cheaper, this is not bad for two adults who ate every meal out and drank a few too many Aperol Spritz’s 😂

Random

Whilst in Venice, my mum and I decided last minute to get matching tattoos 😂. I covered the cost of these as it was my *brilliant* idea 🤦🏼‍♀️. We literally googled tattoo artists in Venice, rang the first one that came up, two hours and £160 later we both had the infinity sign permanently engraved in our skin 😅. Obviously this is not an expense that everyone will be paying!

Total

All in the Wowcher Mystery Holiday cost me £604.70.

Minus the tattoos it was £444.70 for two nights away in Venice. Slightly more than the £99 they are advertised for 😂.

The point of this blog post is to show that you need to consider all the costs before deciding whether it is a good deal. Would I do it again? 10000%. I absolutely loved this trip and the best thing was not knowing where we were going so I would definitely do it again. Read my full review here.

Have you taken the plunge on a Wowcher Mystery Holiday? Where did you go? How much did it cost you? I’d love to hear all about it!