Not that I want to get pulled into whether Ibiza prices are a rip-off, but I started to get curious about what the actual figures show. I first went on an Ibizan clubbing holiday in 1995, and I remember the holiday cost me a £1000 including flights/accomodation/food/drinks/other supplies. If I convert that to todays money, using this site (
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...tion-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.html) then equates to £1830 now, which xe.com tells me is 2140 Euros. That was for a week, so that works out at 305 Euros/day and that was staying in a 1 star sh1t-hole in San Antonio, surviving on 1 spaghetti bolognaise/day, taking the bus everywhere and drinking water in the club as I couldn't afford any alcohol. Nowadays I might spend a bit more (but not that much) and I eat at lovely restaurants (although still rarely more than once a day
), stay in a nice hotel( I can usually find something at 100 Euros/night), take taxis everywhere, and even treat myself to a few drinks in a club (although I'm a mostly water man
)
However, this is only my personal recollection, so I did a bit more research and found this :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/ibiza99/clubs.shtml which shows that 'average' prices for a drink (I assume a beer?) in 1999 varied from 1000 pesetas to 1750 pesetas. xe.com allow for historical conversions and, at that time, 1000 pesetas equates to 6 Euros (in 2002 money) and 1750 pesetas to 10 Euros. However we have to adjust these prices for inflation and this site (
http://fxtop.com/en/inflation-calcu...&MM2=03&YYYY2=2017&btnOK=Compute+actual+value) tells me in that 6 Euros is now 8.76 Euros and 10 Euros is now 14.60 Euros.
So top end club beer prices (i.e. those for the most popular nights) haven't actually changed that much. I think what you can say is that clubs have all moved their averages up to match one another so that you don't find the lower end prices at the big clubs anymore (DC-10 maybe being the exception).
If I applied the same analysis to door prices then the same radio 1 link, suggests ticket prices for the bigger clubs varied from 4000-7000 pesetas which equates to 24-42 Euros in 1999 prices and 33-56 Euros in 2017 prices. Here I think you can argue that prices have most definitely increased for the 'premier' nights but saying that I paid 30 odd Euros for early bird Afterlife tickets and 41 Euros for my Cocoon tickets last year, still comfortably in the same range as the turn of the century.
Yes I agree, there were 'free' taxis and 1 one free drink back in the day but I think the perception that prices have gone through the roof might also be slightly faulty.
To add to that, can I say that if you took advantage of the pre-purchase drinks tickets at Space last year, you could buy water at 6 Euros each (10x60 Euros) which is what me and few mates did or have beer at 10 Euros each (10x100 Euros). I'm not trying to suggest this is a bargain, but these prices were actually cheaper than some clubs were charging at the turn of the century.
Food (and drink) for thought