Dubai - financial recap

Now that we are back from a very expensive trip, I thought I'd recap how things went from a budget perspective. In total, there were 10 people on the trip.

Before I get into all of that, a bit of helpful background. The average income in Iran is very low - $5k/year for a family. My niece is an accountant, works full time, and makes $2400/year. So, it was important for us to pay for as much of the trip as possible. We cannot send money to Iran, due to the sanctions, nor could we cover any expenses before they left the country. My mother in law used a lot of her retirement money to pay for flights for everyone (minus us), and we paid for everything else on the trip: hotel rooms, food, activities, etc. Rather than bringing gifts (culturally traditional), we opted to give everyone money to spend in Dubai. In Iran, you cannot buy branded goods of any kind (Nike, Gap, Apple, etc) due to the trade embargoes, so everything is either fake, or made locally & not particularly high quality. On this trip, the family wanted to buy clothing & shoes that they cannot purchase in Iran, and spent a lot of time stocking up on items for themselves, and for other relatives who couldn't attend. We spent a lot of time at the Nike store. :-) I'm not a big shopper, so this was particularly painful for me, but I understand that I can purchase literally anything I want online, and have it delivered to my house. Every 8-10 years, they can buy name brand goods (if they travel out of the country), so it's a very different experience.

As I mentioned, the trip was very, very expensive, so to humor myself, I'll start with the things that were financial wins:

• We booked the boys their own room (separate from us), and I used hotel points (accrued when traveling for work) to cover the full cost.
• The hotel room came with free breakfast every day. The breakfast buffet was fantastic, and I'd put it on par with a $30-40 breakfast buffet. Because it was Ramadan, it was difficult to get food during the day, so we typically ate only 1-2 meals a day, with several days being just one meal a day, and a snack. 
• The hotel we chose to stay in was very middle of the road, cost wise. There are some seriously luxurious hotels in Dubai - we were not staying there :-). We had six total rooms, with one being covered with points. For a total of six nights. 
• I used United Plus Points (status from work travel) to get on the waiting list for free upgrades. You get a certain number of Plus Points per year, and can use them to apply to the waiting list for various flight segments. This worked out well on the flights from Newark to Dubai, where M & I were double upgraded (from Economy Plus to Premium Plus, and then to business). On the return flights, M & I were upgraded to Premium Plus on the flight from Dubai to Newark, and I was upgraded to first class on the flight from Newark to SFO. Altogether, this was about a $7-8K value in upgrades. 
• Additionally, I paid extra ($500/pp) to upgrade the boys to Premium Plus on the flight from Newark to Dubai. This was a backup plan, in the event that we didn't get upgraded. We were planning to take these seats. A friend had Plus Points that were expiring, and used those points to add the boys to the upgrade list, never expecting it to actually clear. However, due to a storm on the east coast, and lots of flight delays, the boys upgrade also cleared! That's another $5k in value for the upgrades.
• We priced out transportation options to/from SFO, and went with the least expensive option - Lyft. I used my new travel credit card to save another 10% off the trip.
• My new credit card also comes with a Priority Pass membership, which gives you lounge access at a few places. In SFO, they didn't have a lounge, so we got a $56 credit on a meal, and fed everyone breakfast before our first flight. In Dubai, we had access to a very fancy lounge for two adults, and I paid $70 for the boys to also be able to go in. We all ate, got drinks & relaxed for two hours during that time period. M & I got free wine with our meals as well.
• I packed snacks for the flights, and the boys ate quite a bit of those on the trip.
• I had planned to send our laundry out, midway through the trip, as my hotel research indicated they didn't have laundry service. I double checked with the hotel, and they had an onsite washer & dryer. I walked across the street to the convenience store, bought a small container of soap & washed our laundry for about $1.50, saving $35 or so. 

And, now on to the rest of the trip, & the less frugal things:

• The hotel cost $5,200 for all of the rooms, for the full trip. 
• The flights (including the boys paid upgrades) came to $6500. Not bad for four international flights, including a 13 hour leg that was in business for all four of us. 
• We paid for one very fancy dinner out, at a Michelin Persian restaurant. The food was fantastic, and it was cheaper than expected. Alcohol was not available during the majority of the trip, due to local law, as well as Ramadan. I was delighted to see a wine list, and had two glasses of wine during the dinner. 
• We took everyone to the largest water park in the world one of the days, which cost $1,000 for tickets for the group. The food was also expensive, but I'm still in disbelief that the only sunblock cost $86. We didn't check bags, so I brought only a small travel sunblock. We used that earlier in the trip, & I just had no idea sunblock would be so expensive at the water park. I brought it home with me, and I hope it's life changing, for that price. ;-) 
• We did two other paid activities: a trip to the top of Burj Khalifa (tallest building in the world) & a desert tour. The tour included the camel rides, ATV trip of the desert, and a dinner in tents, with entertainment. Together, I think these activities were around $1,200. 
• As mentioned above, we gave everyone cash to spend on the trip. That was $8k. It sounds a little crazy, but remember that we can't exchange gifts (EVER) with M's family, due to the sanctions. That means, no birthday/Christmas/etc gifts of any kind. We have definitely spent more than that, over the past 14 years on my family. 
• The rest of the trip (transportation to/from the airports, Uber rides while in Dubai - x3 (needed 2-3 cars per trip), food for everyone, activities, gifts for them to take back to other family members, souvenirs for the kids, etc) made up the rest of the spending. 

How much did we spend, in total? $26,200.  

I went back & forth quite a bit over posting this, given how much this cost, but thought I'd go with transparency. Traveling with a group of this size was beyond expensive. No regrets of any kind, and if at all possible, we will save up to do it again in a few years. If that doesn't happen, this will definitely be a once in a lifetime trip.