Money on the ground
The package ends at the room. The day does not.
Every price on this site is a band for a shape: the bed, the driving, the flights where the page says flights. None of them is the money you spend between waking up and going back to the room. That money is not a hidden cost and it is not ours to hide. It is the part of the budget you carry yourself, and this page puts a number and a currency next to it.
Four buckets, and who sets each number
Eating and drinking outside the plan
Where the band includes breakfast only, the day is two meals you buy. Where it includes all meals, the day is the drinks list and the coffee you have off the property. Read the basis line on the shape before you assume either.
Tips
The habit changes by country and not by hotel. A restaurant bill in Cape Town and one in Stone Town expect different things, and a lodge staff fund is a different animal from a table tip. The table below states what each one expects.
Getting around locally
Airport transfers are in the band where the basis line says transfers. The taxi to dinner, the bus, the abra, the fuel on a self-drive, and the parking guard are not.
The extras desk
The activity you add on the day, the spa, the second dive, the room upgrade offered at check-in. These are priced by the supplier on the day, in the local currency, at the supplier's rate.
The money each of the six runs on
One row per destination. The currency is a fact. The rest is the habit that goes with it, written down so it does not arrive as a surprise at a till.
| The trip | The money it runs on | Cash or card | Tips | The charge people miss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cape Town and the Winelands | South African rand (ZAR). Rand, and your own bank card behaves the way it behaves at home. Card machines are everywhere in the city and the Winelands. The places that want cash are the farm stalls, the car guards and the tip jar. | Card almost everywhere. R500 to R1,000 in cash for a four-night stay. | 10% to 15% at a table where service is not added, R5 to R10 for a car guard, and around R50 a day left for the room. | The wine you buy at an estate is not the price in a bottle store, and a case sent home is a separate freight charge. |
| Kruger safari | South African rand (ZAR). Rand. The lodge settles the room and the drives, and everything you put on the room account settles at the end. The shop at the gate takes a card. | Card at the lodge. R1,000 or so in cash for the gate shop, the curio stalls and the staff gratuity. | R100 to R200 per person per day into the lodge's staff fund. The guide and the tracker are usually tipped separately at the end of the stay. | Drinks. A lodge that includes dinner and the drives almost never includes the drinks list, and the bar bill is the line that surprises people. |
| Garden Route drive | South African rand (ZAR). Rand, and this is the one shape where the money is mostly fuel and small stops: a farm stall, a cellar door, a boat, a parking guard. | Card in every town. R500 in cash for the farm stalls and the parking attendants. | 10% at a table, R20 to R50 for the person who fills the tank if it is not self-service, and R50 a day for the room. | Fuel. The band names the car, the beds and breakfast. It does not name the tank. |
| Mauritius beach week | Mauritian rupee (MUR). Mauritian rupees. The hotel may quote in rupees or in euros. Your card converts at your bank's rate, and that is the number on your statement. | Card at the hotel and in Port Louis. Cash for the markets, the bus and the beach sellers. R2,000 to R3,000 in rupees is a comfortable float for a week. | 10% where service is not already on the bill, and a note for the porter and the room. Read the bill: many hotels add a service charge. | The extras bill that settles at check-out, and your bank's conversion margin on every swipe. |
| Zanzibar slow week | Tanzanian shilling (TZS). Tanzanian shillings. Shops, restaurants and taxis must price in shillings, while lodges and tour operators still quote in US dollars. You carry both and you spend the shillings. | Cards at the resorts and the larger restaurants, cash everywhere else. Draw shillings in Stone Town on day one. The machines thin out badly along the beaches. | 10% at a restaurant, and tips in shillings for the room and the boat crew. Dollars are welcome for a tip, but at a rate you did not choose. | The ATM operator fee, roughly TZS 6,000 to 10,000 a withdrawal, and the card machine that offers to charge you in dollars instead of shillings. Decline that offer. |
| Dubai short break | UAE dirham (AED). Dirhams, pegged to the dollar. The card works for the taxi, the mall, the abra and the coffee. Cash is for the souk and the small shops. | Card for almost everything. AED 300 to 500 in cash for the souk, the abra and tips. | 10% at a restaurant where service is not added, AED 5 to 10 for a porter, and a note for the valet. | The nightly tourism fee set by hotel class, the municipality fee and VAT sit on the folio. The first two have moved under 2026 relief measures, so read the lines before you check out. |
Currency codes follow ISO 4217. The habits are written from the trade's own briefings and they do not move much. Card acceptance on a beach changes with the weather, so treat the cash line as the float and not as the rule.
What a day costs, outside the band
Three planning numbers per destination, per person, per day, in rand. They are our own published allowance, set so you can plan against something firmer than a shrug. They are not a quote and they are not a rate card: they are the number we will use if you ask us to build this into a budget.
| The trip | Lean | Middle | Generous |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cape Town and the Winelands | R 550 | R 950 | R 1 900 |
| Kruger safari | R 400 | R 700 | R 1 400 |
| Garden Route drive | R 500 | R 900 | R 1 750 |
| Mauritius beach week | R 500 | R 800 | R 1 600 |
| Zanzibar slow week | R 450 | R 700 | R 1 400 |
| Dubai short break | R 700 | R 1 300 | R 2 600 |
Where a shape already includes dinner or all meals, the allowance for that destination is set lower, because the day is smaller. The three styles mean what the planner below says they mean, and the cash share is 60% on lean, 40% on middle and 25% on generous.
Worked through: Two travellers on the middle line, for the nights the entry shape publishes: Kruger safari comes to R 4 200 and Mauritius beach week to R 11 200, a gap of R 7 000 in on-ground money alone. On Kruger safari that is R 1 680 in cash and R 2 520 on the card at the 40% share.
Plan the money the band does not cover
Choose a destination and a style, then press the button.
The arithmetic is allowance times travellers times nights. Nothing is added for a commission, a booking fee or a card surcharge, because this site takes none of those.
The one number this page will not give you
The exchange rate
A rate printed today is wrong by the time you land. We do not sell currency, we do not hold a rate, and we will not print a rand figure as if it were a promise. Your bank's rate on the day is the one that lands on your statement.
The card's own margin
Every swipe in a foreign currency carries your bank's conversion margin, and a card machine offering to charge you in rand is offering you that margin twice. Take the local currency at the machine.
What the supplier adds at check-out
A tourism levy, a service charge, a municipality fee and VAT are set by a government or a hotel group, not by us, and they land on the folio at the end. The table above names the one most often missed in each place.
The live check for this page is scripts/verify-money-on-the-ground-deploy.py.
It re-derives both tables and the worked example from the two data files, and it compares
the bytes the domain serves against the committed file before the deploy is called good.
Build this into the brief.
Five lines and a person reads them. The plan comes back with the band and the on-ground money on separate lines, so you can see which is which.
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The band stays the band.
Nothing on this page changes a price on a destination page. The allowance is added beside the band, never inside it.
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Two lines, not one.
Your quote shows the package and the on-ground money as separate lines. A single blended total hides which half you control.
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No money of yours passes through us.
Travel & Beyond never takes traveller money. The booking is paid to the trade through Lizanne's back-office, and the cash in your pocket stays yours.
The bands are explained on what the bands buy and what it costs. Who pays for what after the booking is on after you book. The six shapes themselves are on the destination pages. The band and the day money added together, for all eighteen shapes, is the whole trip. The day money printed against the band at all three styles, rather than the middle one alone, is what the day adds.