We decided to begin our next journey in Turkey: we had only been there once before, and that time on a package. Yet it is a fascinating country — there is the sea, beautiful scenery and natural sights, ancient cities, old fortresses and temples. So the decision was made — we’re going! All that remained was to buy the tickets. Or would a ready-made tour be cheaper? I decided to do the sums first and compare both options.
We are going away for a long time, and no tours run that long, so for the comparison let us take a standard two-week holiday and see which comes out cheaper.
This is a 2017 calculation. All tour, flight, hotel and insurance prices in this article are from July 2017, when we wrote it, and they are different now. The fresh figures we checked in October 2026 against booking forms and official sources are in the section on getting to your resort.
When is it cheaper to buy a tour to Turkey? In our 2017 calculation, for one or two weeks by the sea the cheapest option was a last-minute tour or a special offer: the best deals appear just a few days before departure and are usually sold out within a day, so they suit travellers with flexible dates. If you are travelling for longer and want to see several towns and cities, it works out cheaper to organise the trip yourself — and a package can still be used for the first few days, simply as your flight. Below is the full calculation.
Our starting point — a holiday for two people, with travel dates in July–August. There is little point going earlier in the season — it is the sea we want first and foremost, and the excursions afterwards, right?
1. A holiday in Turkey through a tour agency
1.1. Prices
I obviously cannot cover every departure city and every Turkish resort, so I will stick to Kemer, Marmaris and Antalya.
Here is what a bargain-tour search engine was offering for Kemer:
The cost of tours to Marmaris:
And here is what 14 nights in the Antalya area (Kemer, Alanya, Side) cost in summer 2017 in a five-star all-inclusive hotel:
So two people could stay in the most basic three-star hotel with breakfast and dinner included, or in the cheapest five-star all-inclusive — and at the exchange rate of the time the minimum came to between $840 and $1,700 in the simplest hotels of each category. In principle you could spend the whole time at the hotel, but you will most likely want to go on at least a couple of excursions, so those are additional costs.
But searching for a tour through an agency is far from the best route if what you want is a budget last-minute deal. The cheapest offers appear on special-offer sites, where tours can be so cheap that they undercut the price of flights alone. Such sites suit travellers who are not fixed on particular dates, because the best deals may not appear until a few days before departure.
Here is the kind of Turkey offer available when we were writing this article in 2017 (not strictly a last-minute tour, but one you have to grab quickly, because such offers usually sell out within a day): two weeks at the five-star Port River Hotel & Spa 5* for just $765 per person — and that is a genuinely good hotel, not the cheapest and most basic. A three-star all-inclusive could be had for as little as $395. Short tours of a couple of days sometimes turn up for $100–150; they can be used as a flight plus accommodation and food for the first couple of days.
Out of curiosity, we also checked what a tour to that same hotel cost on tour-comparison sites. In 2017 a fortnight there for two people came to almost $1,500 — practically the same as the special offer. So special-offer sites are only worth it for short tours; longer ones come out at roughly the same price as from a tour agency.
But in this example I am looking at tour-comparison sites, which show the best available price for tours! At ordinary agencies the price will be higher, because the travel agent’s commission is added on top. So if you do want to buy a package, definitely buy it not at a high-street agency but online, on a reputable site.
1.2. Advantages of travelling through a tour agency
- You don’t have to organise anything yourself or spend time on it. Tickets, hotel bookings, insurance, transfers and so on are all arranged for you.
- Once there, you don’t have to find anything out yourself or work out how to get around — you are met, driven there, collected and so on. But isn’t that dull! For me it is actually a minus, but for many people it is still a plus, so let us record it as a plus.
- Since people usually buy all-inclusive tours, you won’t have to spend extra on food.
- The low price of the tour, thanks to the big discounts tour agencies get on flights and hotels.
1.3. Disadvantages of a package tour
- For me the biggest minus of buying a ready-made tour is the uncertainty. Judging by the state of the travel market, you can never be sure that the tour agency won’t suddenly go bankrupt and your money disappear. Particularly frightening are the stories of tourists simply unable to travel home because their agency went bust.
- There is practically nothing you can choose yourself or quality-check. You can, of course, ask in advance to be sent to a particular hotel, but that becomes an individual tour, which is much more expensive than a standard package. Usually you are offered just a few options to choose from — when in fact there are hundreds of hotels! And what if you don’t like the hotel? You can’t move to another one, everything is already paid for — what then?
- Because tour agencies survive on volume, you will most likely be holidaying in a hotel filled for the most part with other package tourists — and, frankly, the crowd is usually not of the best sort. Is that really what you want from a holiday?
- Most often, the hotels sold in packages sit in a tourist ghetto — settlements made up exclusively of hotels, from where the nearest town has to be reached by transport. In such places it is hard to feel the atmosphere of the country. You can, of course, go on excursions, but the best way to get to know a country is to see how ordinary people live, wander the side streets and have lunch in a little café for locals.
In short, there are plenty of minuses, and the list could go on for ever. In any case, if you buy a last-minute package from the outset to serve as your flights and accommodation for the first few days, you can find genuinely good, good-value options.
2. An independent holiday in Turkey
To organise the trip ourselves, we need to find flights and book hotels. For a clean experiment, let us look for an all-inclusive hotel (they can be booked without any agency!), so the only remaining costs are excursions, getting around and insurance.
You will have to pay extra for excursions in either case, so we won’t include them in the comparison — though you should of course factor them into your budget planning.
2.1. Flights to Antalya
First of all, you need to find the best-value flights. You can get around Turkey by train, by bus or on the local budget airline Pegasus Airlines, so the main thing is to find a cheap flight into any city in Turkey.
If the city doesn’t matter and you simply want the cheapest tickets, use the low-price calendar on a flight-search site:
Choose your departure city, the country of arrival and your dates (July–September); you can also set the length of the trip — let us take the same 14 days. When we ran the numbers in 2017, the cheapest flight on 2 September was to Antalya. Since we still had to get to the resort, we then added the cost of travelling on to Side.
2.2. Getting to your resort
There are several ways to get from Antalya to Side; here we will look at the most common — by bus and by booked transfer.
There is no direct city bus from Antalya Airport to Side, so you first have to get to Antalya’s bus station and continue from there. We once travelled much the same way from Antalya Airport to Alanya — in short, it was long and exhausting, and I would not attempt that journey with a child. As of 2026, the same route — bus 600 from the airport to Antalya bus station, an intercity bus to Manavgat (295 lira) and a dolmuş on to Side — costs about 395 lira per person, if you pay for the city bus and the dolmuş by bank card (50 lira each).
You can also take a shuttle bus (a shared minibus) straight from the airport to the centre of Side; in 2017 this cost $29.
The most convenient option is, of course, an individual transfer from the airport to your hotel, but it naturally costs more; the drive takes about 1 hour 35 minutes.
So, at 2017 prices, for two people flying to Turkey for just a fortnight, the flights and the onward journey to Side alone already added up to a considerable sum.
2.3. Hotels
The next item is booking a hotel. Can you book the same hotel we looked at as part of a tour independently, and what does it cost? I usually search for hotels on a comparison site that checks prices across different booking sites, so you can find the cheapest rate for a given hotel.
So, the Port River Hotel & Spa 5* for 13 nights: booked independently in 2017, the hotel alone for 13 nights came to a hefty sum for the two of us.
Let us look at another five-star hotel with a good rating: the Primasol Hane Garden Hotel 5*, for example, cost less for the same dates while scoring higher (8.5 against the previous hotel’s 7.4) — yet for some reason hotels like this are not offered in packages.
2.4. Other expenses
- Food. Since the hotels we found are all-inclusive, food costs can be left out. But if you choose accommodation with breakfast and dinner only, food becomes the next budget line after tickets and hotels. Everyone’s spending will be completely different — it all depends on how you are used to eating, whether you will eat in cafés all the time or cook at home and so on. Most likely you will spend about the same on food as you do at home, give or take 10%. So do your own sums.
- Getting around. You will need to get from the airport and back, and if you plan to visit other towns and see the sights, you can add those trips too. By our rough 2017 estimate, all the airport–town–hotel transfers and back came to about $100–200.
- Insurance. When we ran the numbers in 2017, a two-week policy for two people cost very little. Whether to buy it is up to you, but we always take one out just in case.
- Excursions and souvenirs. This expense arises either way — on an independent trip and with a package — so it has to be added in both versions. Excursions from Side and the surrounding area can be browsed and compared by price online in advance.
- Sundries. This category covers all the small expenses — for example, hiring a sun lounger on the beach or buying sunscreen (in case you forgot yours). All in all, I would allow no more than $100–200 for this category.
2.5. What an independent holiday in Turkey costs in total
All in all, adding up the transfers and the hotel, an independent two-week holiday in Side for two people at 2017 prices came to more than buying the ready-made tour, not counting entertainment — but you get to choose. With a different five-star hotel you could bring the total down to a price at which no ready-made five-star tours existed at all.
If we are setting off on a longer journey and only need one-way tickets, the sum comes out differently — for the same two weeks we would have spent much less, not counting food (though breakfasts were included in our hotel rates). So in principle you can buy a ready-made tour, spend two weeks by the sea, and then set off on further travels around Turkey.
2.6. Advantages of independent travel in Turkey
- The biggest plus of all — complete freedom of choice! You can choose your own dates, your airline (and with it order special meals and choose your seat on board!), and the right hotel (seeing straight away where it is and what of interest is nearby).
- Independent route planning. You can travel through towns to which no packages are sold, see the most interesting sights and combine different kinds of holiday in one trip. For example, spend a few days in Istanbul first and then relax by the sea.
- No being tied to a particular hotel and place. If you don’t like the hotel, you simply move to another; if you don’t like the town, you move on to the next. Don’t like the hotel breakfasts — find the café with the tastiest dishes. Having a choice is always pleasant.
- No imposed services and uninteresting excursions. You can go where you want by yourself, without the tour firm’s excursions on which you are carted round all the unnecessary shops.
- Immersion in real, non-tourist life, studying the country’s culture and atmosphere. If you have no interest in spending your whole holiday in a tourist “ghetto”, you can stay in a small guesthouse in the town centre and study the local culture “from the inside”.
- The thrill and the step outside your comfort zone! For some this will be a minus, but for real travellers it is always a plus — you have to find your bearings in an unfamiliar place and locate sights, hotels and bus stops on your own. How else can you really get to know a country?
2.7. Disadvantages of independent travel in Turkey
- Full responsibility for organising your own journey — you will have to do everything yourself, and if any problems arise you will have to solve them yourself too.
- If you are only going for two weeks and want to spend the whole time by the sea, booking independently ends up costing more than buying a ready-made tour.
- It is hard to calculate the budget in advance: with a package you pay for everything at once (except excursions), whereas on an independent trip you spend as you go — you pay extra for food, getting around and so on.
3. Conclusions
By our 2017 calculation, if you are planning a trip to Turkey for one or two weeks, it is cheaper to buy a last-minute tour, use it as your flight, and then organise the rest of your holiday yourself once you are there.
A tour also suits those who want to relax as much as possible, do nothing and simply rest in one place. But in that case it is still better to at least read reviews of the hotels the agency offers and choose the best option in terms of value for money, so as not to regret a spoilt holiday.
And if you are setting off on a long journey, you will have to organise everything yourself in any case, even if you do buy a package for the first stretch. Independent travels are always richer, more authentic and more interesting, so don’t limit yourself to an all-inclusive holiday — go on excursions, take a trip to the nearest town, drop into a little café for locals, see how ordinary people live, and you will learn far more about the country than you could ever imagine within the walls of a hotel. Travelling is wonderful!
Tell us in the comments: do you like planning your holiday yourself, or do you prefer to rely on a tour firm for everything? Do you buy ready-made tours, or do you look for tickets, hotels and everything else on your own? Which kind of holiday interests you more?
P.S. We are already busy packing for a new journey, so very soon a new country and new interesting articles will appear on the blog — don’t miss them!
