How much does it ACTUALLY cost to visit Fiji? (Fiji Travel Guide)

When Fiji comes to mind, many people picture a paradise with luxury villas, overwater bungalows, and honeymooners. This is what I always thought Fiji was. Then one day I was browsing for flights and saw a reasonably priced flight to Fiji. I made a spontaneous decision to book the flight. Now I'm going to take you along with me and show you how much it actually costs to visit Fiji. Once I arrived in Fiji, I paid for a taxi to get to my hostel which cost $13.23. I stayed in a 16-room hostel and paid $9.50 for the room. To put that in perspective, hostels in Australia cost $40-50. So here's a hostel, it cost me $10 per night. This hostel was pretty basic and the beach wasn't that nice. This hostel is used more as a starting and ending point for the islands. If you don't want to stay in a hostel though, look at how reasonable accommodation is and handy. Restaurants in this area were pretty pricey. It turns out the hostel was in this little secluded corner with nothing around it except other hostels, budget hotels, and restaurants. This means that they were able to up their prices for food quite significantly. The cheapest meals I could find here ranged from $5-10. I did a grocery run for some snacks and it cost me $10.85 total which I thought was pretty pricey for what it was. So today I got these bars. I got a whole box of them. It came with six in these chips and I spent $5. And that's my lunch today. Once I left this little corner of the mainland, things got much cheaper. Meals started ranging from less than $1 to $4 for nicer meals. For breakfast and lunch I was eating for about $1 or less and for dinner I was paying between $3-4. Excursions is where you can start spending a lot of money on the mainland. If you book through a travel agency or something like TripAdvisor, it's going to cost you $100 per excursion. To put that into perspective really quick, that's more than a lot of the excursions here in Australia. By the way, I'm currently in Australia. I'm whooping at the moment. So there might be some Australia price references in this video as well. For your day trips in Fiji though, if you end up taking the bus, it could be much cheaper. The problem is a lot of the day trips on the mainland don't have a bus route to get there. For my full day excursion, I ended up hiring a driver instead. I started at 8am and I ended at 7pm. I went out to a hike, I explored a city, went to the Garden of the Sleeping Giants, and went to some hot springs. All of these things had pricey entrance fees plus I had to pay for a driver. Still, I only spent including all of my meals. So this was still cheaper than an excursion and I got to go at my own pace. If I could have taken a bus to these locations though, it would have been much cheaper. In any city on the mainland, accommodation can be very cheap. The thing is, people don't go to Fiji for the cities, they go for the beaches. So while I was on the mainland, I went down to an area called the Coral Coast. This is known for having the best beaches in all of Fiji. I went to a hostel slash resort called Beach House. This cost me $27 per night which I thought was a good deal but maybe that's because I'm in Australia where hostels are a lot more than that every single night and they are nowhere near as nice. At Beach House, each dorm had our own outdoor bathroom complete with a fancy outdoor shower. I felt like I was some fancy influencer or was on my honeymoon or something. I was obsessed with the shower. The hostel also had free kayaks, hammocks, and an overall really good vibe. I met some amazing people here and I loved it. It is also the place to go for surfing and I also got to do a surfing lesson here. It costed me $57 for a three-hour lesson. I liked it so much that I stayed here for a week even though I originally only booked two nights. However, because it was more resort-like, the food was very expensive. Most of the time, I skipped lunch altogether or just got a smoothie for lunch. Prices range from $6 to $14.20 for a meal. Now a $14 meal is expensive for a backpacker but for a resort, it's not that expensive. So if you're just going on a normal holiday or vacation, it's not terribly priced. Backpackers just find it to be expensive. But in reality, it's not a bad deal. You could stay here for a really long time and not spend that much money. During happy hour, they also had beers for only $2.50 and wines for only $3. So really, it's not that bad for a country that I thought was so luxurious. You could only come here if you were super rich or if you're going on some fancy honeymoon. Now that we have covered the mainland, let's move on to the islands because this is where things get more expensive. I arranged my island hopping trip through my hostel. However, it turned out to be more expensive by doing it this way. If you pick one or two islands and arrange your own transport, it could be so much cheaper. The most expensive part of the islands will be the food. The resorts require you to pay for meal plans that cost $52.82 per day. Homestays, however, will have much lower prices for the meal plans. I stayed in two homestays while on the islands and I loved them so much. This was my highlight of Fiji and I highly recommend everybody do it. Most homestays can be booked on Airbnb or Booking.com. It saves a lot of money plus it is such an enriching cultural experience. The homestays offer excursions as well. I did a shark snorkeling for $28.70 and this combined both the sharks and spearfishing. Plus our guides were only eight years old so that was fun. Then at one point the dad came off the boat and he fed a shark directly out of his mouth. It was so cool. If you decide to stay at the resorts, you can book a dorm bed in the resorts. I stayed at one and it only cost me $25 per night for the dorm bed itself. I'm now at the next destination which is the resort on this beautiful, beautiful island. To do it on a budget, I am in a dorm room but I am the only person here. So really, I have my own private little bungalow by myself right on the beach which is literally right there. Basically, I just have my own private beach right here which is amazing and the sea is so white and clear. It is the most private beach in Fiji. How did this happen? How did I end up with my own private beach in Fiji? This resort was more of a backpacker's resort though and it was on the budget end. Everyone at the resort was amazing and it had such a strong community and family feel to it that I will remember like forever. I loved it. I highly recommend this resort as well but if you want something more upscale, it's gonna cost you a lot more. What I did realize was that Fiji can be done on whatever budget you want. You could get an overwater villa, you can backpack through Fiji, or you could be somewhere in the middle. I also realized that for most of us, a trip to Fiji will probably be cheaper than a trip to Hawaii. The excursions were cheaper, the dives were cheaper at only $80 per dive, and even many hotels were cheaper than Hawaii. So if you're able to find a decent flight, then Fiji will probably be cheaper than Hawaii. Another thing that was unexpected about Fiji was the backpacker culture. There are tons of backpackers in Fiji and it is so easy to make friends. I don't think I ate a single meal alone the entire two and a half weeks I was there. That's unheard of. That has never happened to me before ever and to compare that with Australia again, I haven't even had a chance to eat a meal with other people besides right now I'm volunteering so I eat with the family. But other than that, Fiji's special. Not every place has a backpacker culture like that. The backpacker community here is also amazing and I really think that's what put this experience over the top. So throughout your whole travels, you're constantly running into people that you've already known and it kind of feels like just a really nice community and like a little family here in Fiji. So it's just been so great and sad to be leaving. Because Fiji is a small country and backpackers tend to go to the same places, you are constantly running into the same people. You end up spending a lot of time with people and becoming friends. The travelers in Fiji were all so friendly and were wanting to make friends. It was just really easy to connect with people and was very community-based. It felt like a little Fiji family. It was honestly the strongest backpacker culture I have ever experienced. The people were just so great. Overall, Fiji was much cheaper than I expected. It is reasonably priced and cost a fraction of what you would pay in Hawaii. Don't think that Fiji is only for the rich or only for honeymooners. I backpacked through Fiji and I loved it. There was a ton of backpackers and solo travelers. I am so glad I got to learn about and experience Fiji and I hope that I have inspired you to do the same.