Travel DUBAI on a BUDGET – Tips + Things to do in Dubai 2023

Glad it was helpful! Have the best time.

Agreed! You definitely don’t have to spend a lot here. There’s something for everyone!

Agree, spent around 1500€ too, everything included, even airline tickets, celebrating my birthday in 2021 with a group of seven total, most of us roughly spent the same, we shared expenses.

Plane to Turkey, because they had to do some last minute rescheduling, missed a day in Dubai, but all seven got a free night stay, then next day Abu Dhabi, two cheapest rental cars, drove to Dubai.
Among random walking around and chilling at the beach, visited some garden with an emirates plane covered in roses, zero gravity beach, rented two jetskis with a friend, also rented a thing that gets towed by a boat for all seven, a great restaurant with a view to mall fountain show, found it randomly and asked nicely, so they let us in, next to us was some local sports celebrity, then desert visit, driving on sand dunes, sandboarding, camels, a show at night with food, awesome dude as our driver, (still remember you Abas and have your phone number), next day some well known water park, day spent there, girls cooked us dinner at the apartment that night, then at some point the mall, some aquarium place, ain dubai wheel visit, my personal favorite was some infinity pool that had been opened for a few days, almost fully booked, got the least expensive tickets, but the receptionist heard our language and expected us to be finnish, not case, so we got to talking and since someone had cancelled, he upgraded us to vip seats, overseeing the palm (thank you dude). Then we went to the desert again, this time only 4, had a hot airballoon ride and also some desert afternoon drinks, and there was a horse too, who wanted to try, other three girls spent that time of the day at the mall. Visited world expo, 4 of us also went on a helicopter ride for city sightseeing. That’s pretty much it, some more restaurants, coffee places, some went to nightclubs and just talking to some locals, asking what it’s really like to live in dubai. Our parking house security guy was always excited to see us, dude even put cones in front of our two parking spaces. And last day we drove back to Abu Dhabi, visited the holy site and then the airport.

So yea, that was a lovely 10-11 day trip for my birthday and sharing all the regular food and accommodation cost definitely helped. So traveling in a group is my advice, definitely was more fun too. If you’re a nice person, maybe you get some nice treatment too from the city + it helps to have 5 stunning ladies in dresses if you go to a restaurant or any place else. We got to skip a line several times and got better seating and treatment too just because of that, power of women! Also buy local data plan and use a money system, which doesn’t have high exchange rate fees, we used Revolut with a metal plan, got most of my monthly cost back with cash back, so had travel insurance for free basically, but this is important, by far better exchange rate than two of my other cards, so look into your bank exchange rate + additional fees. Lots of conversions on the balance sheet.

Dubai was enjoyable, 100%! Will definitely go again. Most of the activities were last minute decisions, so we didn’t get any special deals, although I did ask some of the places for discounts and it still came out to 1500 € for the vacation, slightly less.

Happy travels!

@@BigJayPodcast I don’t know, we visited November 2021. Group of 7, 5 girls, 2 guys, used splitwise for all shared costs: rental apartment, groceries, car rent + fuel + tolls etc. Activities too, one paid, the others reimbursed. Did a get even expenses meeting every day or two, the app simplified debts and who to send money to even it all out.

There was no special formula though, looked for discounts online or asked at the counter, ex do you do birthday discounts, many did, aquarium tickets were cheaper online, jetskis had to haggle over the price for 15min, asking to come lower, however that was pretty crazy, 140 euros for 2 jet skis for 30 min, but it was at a location directly at zero gravity beach, so we just figured f* it, lets do it, although even that felt like a rip off. But other stuff was fairly cheap, hot air balloon was 304 euros per person for 4, desert was about 35€ per person, ain dubai we got a discount, 28€ per person just almost the end of the sunset and so on. Helicopter ride was a gift so I didn’t pay that. Food was okayish, still expensive to my country, drinks were expensive, but didn’t buy many. At the waterpark a 6 bottle corona extra bucket was 60€ we split with a friend, got 3 each. But nothing was prepurchased and most ideas were spontaneous or was a researched idea. We skipped burj khalifa because we all decided we want to go back and leave something for another time, plus we spent quite a bit up in the air already with flying and ferris wheel, left dubai frame too for next time, etc.

So my best advice is have up to 8 people, 2 regular cars, 4 in each and rent an apartment. Make sure you have some cute women in the group, restaurants will sit you at better spots or you’ll get in a restaurant that claims to be fully booked, just say but we promised the girls waiting there (pointing to them) a great dining experience, and if they actually have room, they might not send the nicely dressed group away.

So yea, we just did it somehow, everything was easy mode the entire trip, got plenty of attention as we went about our day and we were just some random university students from the Baltics. Hope it helps.

We were wondering why we saw so many paparazzi!!

Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed it.