Behind the Scenes: How We Budget a Wanderful Journey
Featuring our Bonaire 2025 Itinerary
Wanderful Journeys is a travel club—not a big business. We believe your travel experience should be customizable, transparent, and fairly priced—not stuffed with inflated fees and one-size-fits-all packages. Instead of locking you into extras you don’t want or charging you for things you could do better yourself, we build our trips around flexibility and value.
In this post, we’re pulling back the curtain on how we budget our trips, using our first itinerary—Bonaire 2025—as a real-world example.
✈️ What's Included in Our Budgeted Trip Price?
The budgeted trip price for a Wanderful Journey itinerary includes the following essentials:
🛏️ Accommodations
🚐 Ground transportation (including airport transfers)
🛂 Visa fees and tourist taxes
🐠 Activities (there's always an option to opt out or customize!)
We keep it simple: these are the basics you need to travel well—and we will help you find the best value for your group.
❌ What’s Not Included (But We Do Support!)
There are some things that are too personal or variable to build into a group price—so we leave them up to you. But that doesn’t mean you’re on your own. We’ll provide guidance and tools to help you manage these with confidence:
✈️ Airfare
Airfare is notoriously unpredictable. We don’t include it in your trip price because prices can vary widely depending on your city, your airline, your travel dates, and whether you’re using points or perks.
For Bonaire 2025, we paid $563.84 per person from Raleigh-Durham—but we used reward points to cut that in half.
We’ll share average flight prices, help you search for deals, and even coordinate travel with other group members if you want to fly together.
🍽️ Meals
We won’t charge you $80 for a dinner you don’t enjoy. Meals are self-catered or purchased locally at your own pace and preference.
For Bonaire, we budgeted $350/person and came in under $300—with full bellies and zero regrets.
🛡️ Travel Insurance
We strongly recommend it. Travel insurance can protect your investment from last-minute hiccups like delays, illness, or cancellations. Many of our trips include a flexible cancellation policy, but you’ll want to review it and decide what coverage feels right for you.
🧒 Childcare
Traveling with kids? Awesome. Traveling without them? Also awesome. We don’t include childcare by default, but we can help you find options that match your family’s needs. On some full-service trips, our guides may offer babysitting, when feasible.
🐾 Homecare (Pet & House Sitting)
Not everyone needs this, but if you do, we’re building a community that will help you share trusted recommendations for housesitters, pet care, and more.
💰 Budget Snapshot
Here’s a quick look at what’s included—and what’s up to you:
| Category | Included? | Notes |
| 🛏️ Accommodations | ✅ Yes | Vacation rentals, hotel rooms, campsites -- whatever fits your style |
| 🚐 Ground Transportation | ✅ Yes | Airport transfers and all in-destination group transport |
| 🛂 Visa Fees/Taxes | ✅ Yes | We’ll handle the research and make sure you’re covered |
| 🐠 Activities | ✅ Yes | Fully customizable for each trip |
| 🍽️ Meals | ❌ No | Eat what you want, when you want—we’ll share recommendations |
| ✈️ Airfare | ❌ No | Book on your own (with our help if needed) |
| 🧼 Laundry & Housekeeping | 🟡 Sometimes | Offered on some full-service trips |
| 🧒 Childcare | 🤷 Maybe | Available upon request or when offered by guides |
| 🧭 Trip Planning & Support | ✅ Yes | Full itinerary, on-call assistance |
| 🛡️ Travel Insurance | ❌ No | Strongly recommended—your peace of mind is worth it |
🧳 Want to See This in Action?
Check out our Bonaire 2025 brochure to see how it all comes together. It’s the first in our destination library—and a perfect example of how a Wanderful Journey balances group convenience with personal choice.
If you’ve ever dreamed of traveling with just enough structure to feel supported—and just enough freedom to make it yours... welcome to Wanderful Journeys.
Let’s go somewhere 🌍