After having several nightmare experiences with Airbnb, my wife and I thought it would be good to know what it costs for a 5-star luxury hotel as a more reliable alternative to vacation rentals.
By doing this research we’d know our options and whether or not we could afford to stay at the best accommodation in any given destination to which we might be going.
We’ve created this resource to help you plan your next vacation and to show that it is possible to find affordable opulence if you go to the right place!
Our Methodology
To calculate the yearly and high season average price of 5-star hotels in each destination we used TripAdvisor as our primary data source. However, certain hotels and resorts didn’t have prices displayed, so in that case, we went directly to the hotel website.
We selected one weeknight in December, March, June, and September in 2018 and checked prices for the five best “Traveler Ranked” hotels in each destination and then averaged those prices to get the numbers you see in our dataset. By using this approach we were able to get a highly accurate representation of average hotel prices across the globe.
We had to expand the area of several destinations in order to have enough hotels in our dataset. These were mainly islands and small countries regions for example: Bali and Costa Rica. All research for each season was performed at least three months in advance to avoid prices being inflated due to last minute bookings. We ended up with 234 destinations around the world that you can browse in the below table.
Ukrainian agricultural exports to the European Union (EU) countries in January-May 2019 grew by 30.8% compared with the same period in 2018, to $2.97 billion, Acting Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine Olha Trofimtseva has said. “Export of Ukrainian products to the EU during the reporting period increased 30.8%, to $2.967 billion. Import increased 12.1% and amounted to $1.227 billion,” she wrote on her Facebook page on Friday.
The share of the Netherlands of goods turnover between Ukraine and the EU countries was 17.6%, Spain’s – 13.7%, Poland – 13.1%, Germany – 10.8%, Italy – 10.8%, France – 5.7%, the U.K. – 4.1%, Belgium – 3.2%, Portugal – 2.9%, Hungary – 2.9% and Ireland – 2.7%.
The main products in the structure of exports to the EU are cereal grains – $1.4 billion, vegetable oils – $610.5 million, leftovers and waste from the food industry – $272.8 million, oilseeds – $177.4 million, meat and edible offal of poultry – nearly $86 million, fruits, nuts and zest – $53 million, grain products and cereals – $36.4 million, honey – $34.6 million.
The primary registrations of electric (used and new) vehicles in Ukraine in January-June 2019 grew by 58% year-over-year, to 3,185 vehicles (2,964 cars and 221 commercial vehicles), the Ukrautoprom association has reported. The share of used electric vehicles was 91%.
Nissan Leaf remains the leader in the passenger electric car segment: in six months 1,550 cars of this model received Ukrainian license plates, Tesla Model S was second (253 registrations), BMW i3 with 189 cars was third.
The electric car FIAT 500e was chosen by 135 Ukrainians, and the Renault Zoe sold 134 cars.
In the commercial segment, the RENAULT Kangoo Z.E has the best result: 206 registrations in six months.
Commodity pattern of foreign trade of ukraine (export), jan–apr, 2019
Top-20 countries with which ukraine has most favorable balance in jan–apr, 2019
The hryvnia will continue strengthening in the short term, according to bankers polled by Interfax-Ukraine. “It is likely that soon we will see UAH 25.5 per $1,” senior analyst at Raiffeisen Bank Aval Mykhailo Rebryk has said. According to him, the main factors of the observed strengthening of the hryvnia exchange rate are sales of currency by non-residents for the purchase of government domestic loan bonds and seasonal sales by large exporters of currency earnings from the sale of a new crop.
Rebryk believes that fundamental risks for the hryvnia exchange rate in the short term are insignificant.
“The trade balance had a slight deficit in May, EUR1 billion from eurobond placement in June is likely to cover the cumulative deficit of the financial account, and on the current account receipts from labor migrants cover trade deficit,” he said.
The expert believes that the parliamentary elections in July will not significantly affect the hryvnia exchange rate.
“Given the fact that sociological ratings accurately reflected the situation in the run-up to the presidential elections, we can expect that the results of parliamentary elections will generally correspond to the results of polls. And what is predictable, it is laid down in the expectations of market participants. Therefore, we do not expect a significant impact of the election results on the market,” he said.
At the same time, according to Rebryk, the further expansion of the trade deficit and peak payments on the state debt in September will create certain fundamental prerequisites for weakening the hryvnia exchange rate by the autumn.
Director for Treasury at Bank Credit Dnepr Oleh Kurinny said that in the absence of economic and political shocks, the hryvnia exchange rate in July will be in the range of UAH 25.90 – 26.40/$1. According to him, further exchange rate trends will be determined by the vectors of foreign, economic and monetary policies, the course of the parliamentary election campaign and cooperation with international financial institutions, the level of investor interest in government bonds, world commodity and stock market conditions, the volume of export income and earnings from labor migrants.
“Seasonal factors, of course, have a certain impact on the volume and structure of export-import transactions, but it is not fatal and can be partially minimized by the effective preventive actions of the regulator in the field of monetary policy and linking hryvnia liquidity,” he added.
According to Kurinny, the key factors that contributed to the strengthening of the hryvnia exchange rate below the psychological mark of UAH 26/$1 were: the preservation of the NBU key policy rate in June at 17.5% as a signal of maintaining high yield of government bonds and deposit certificates – tools of hryvnia liquidity; the results of the latest auctions of the Finance Ministry on placement of government bonds, which confirmed interest in Ukrainian securities, having an additional stabilizing effect on the mood of market players and increasing the supply of currency; complete abolition of the mandatory sale of foreign currency income by the business; the continued seasonal prevalence of currency supply in the cash market; active participation of the regulator with the purchase of surplus foreign currency supply, smoothing exchange rate dynamics, but supporting the general revaluation trend.
