Summer’s here, holidays are here, and it’s time to roll out the map. But where to drop that pin? If you are a cost-conscious traveler, and tangled in choices, these two pages are for you.
How would you like to know about a European city that lies on the edge of the continent, but where the cost of essential spends is about one-third that of Amsterdam, or roughly the same as Delhi? Or, the one city in Central America where a bus ticket and a movie ticket costs less than Delhi, and where the cost of basic spends is roughly the same as Delhi? Or, the cheapest North American city that is not in the US? Or, which is cheaper: Madrid or Barcelona? Melbourne or Vienna?
The Mint Globetrotter Index takes the cost of a bunch of essential spends—25 in all, across a cross-section of categories—and distills it to a single number to help you balance costs with the travel experience you seek.
Keeping aside what a city offers, the one big takeaway from this data collating and crunching is this: in every region, there’s a city—or two or three, or more—where the cost of essential spends is significantly lower than the others that make up this grouping. This package aims to direct you to five such foreign cities, while contextualizing another 45 foreign cities so that you can make an informed decision from a cost perspective.