Which US presidents had the most expensive vacations paid by taxpayers and what drove those costs?
Executive summary
Taxpayer-borne presidential travel routinely runs into the millions: Air Force One operations alone can cost roughly $5 million for a single short overseas trip, and multi‑stop tours can top $20 million when hotels, cargo flights and per‑diems are added [1] [2]. Recent reporting and advocacy groups single out Donald Trump as driving especially high vacation costs—analyses and news outlets cite totals from tens to hundreds of millions tied to golf and resort stays, while watchdogs stress limited transparency in official accounting [3] [4] [5].
1. The headline numbers: how expensive are presidential vacations?
Presidential travel is expensive by design: independent analyses find that a single-country overseas visit can cost about $5 million largely for aircraft operations, security and support, while multi-stop tours have exceeded $20 million once the full logistics and personnel costs are included [1] [2]. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has broken out items such as roughly $10.6 million for government aircraft and boats and $3 million for temporary duty costs in a single estimate of travel-related operating costs, underscoring that aviation and staff TDY are major line items [6].
2. Which presidents have the “most expensive” vacations on record?
Available public studies and news coverage point repeatedly to Donald Trump’s trips—particularly golf and Mar‑a‑Lago weekends—as among the costliest in recent memory. Media and watchdog tallies attribute tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to his trips (examples: $81 million for Florida trips cited by HuffPost, and larger cumulative golf‑trip totals reported), and news outlets report ongoing large security and logistical bills tied to his travel [3] [4] [7]. The National Taxpayers Union Foundation maintains comparative travel data across presidents but emphasizes many cost drivers and transparency gaps [2].
3. What specifically drives these high costs?
Three categories recur across reporting and audits: aircraft and logistics, Secret Service and local security, and lodging and per‑diem for hundreds of accompanying personnel. Air Force One and related government aircraft have very high hourly operating costs; the Secret Service requires surge staffing and coordination with Defense and local agencies; and multi‑vehicle convoys and temporary lodging for support teams add up rapidly [6] [1]. Local jurisdictions also incur costs—county sheriffs and local governments sometimes report “tens of millions” in security expenses tied to presidential visits and seek federal reimbursement [5] [4].
4. Where contention and competing perspectives lie
Advocacy groups and media allege excessive waste and self‑enrichment when presidents visit properties they own—claims leveled prominently at Trump, who critics say mixes official travel with visits to his businesses and whose stays have led to Secret Service spending at his properties (p1_s10; [8] not within provided-date constraints but echoed in [4] and p1_s6). Defenders and some local officials counter that presidents often perform official duties while away and that prior presidents of both parties also traveled extensively; they point to the lack of a single, current, comprehensive public tally for any president’s total travel costs [5] [2].
5. Transparency gaps that make comparisons fraught
GAO and journalists repeatedly note incomplete reporting: GAO found agencies often did not fully report protection costs, and local and federal line items are fragmented, so apples‑to‑apples comparisons across presidencies are difficult [6] [5]. The Palm Beach Post emphasizes there is no up‑to‑date, public, comprehensive tally for recent presidential visits, meaning many cost estimates by watchdogs and outlets rely on partial FOIA results, local invoices and extrapolations [5].
6. What to watch for in interpreting claims
When you see headline totals—“$10 million” for a single trip or “$100+ million” across terms—ask what’s included: aircraft operating time, surge Secret Service staffing, local law enforcement overtime, lodging and cargo flights can be counted differently by different analysts [1] [6]. Political actors also use these figures to score points: partisan groups may emphasize self‑enrichment or waste, while allies emphasize “working vacations” and precedent [4] [5].
7. Bottom line and reporting limitations
Records show presidential travel routinely costs millions per trip and that recent reporting highlights Donald Trump’s vacations as particularly costly to taxpayers, driven by aircraft ops, security and lodging and complicated by his use of private properties [1] [4] [3]. But official, comprehensive accounting is incomplete: GAO and local reporting document reporting gaps, and available sources do not provide a definitive, fully comparable ranked list across all presidents [6] [5].
If you’d like, I can pull the specific NTU travel datasets and the GAO travel‑cost tables cited here to create a side‑by‑side comparison of reported trips and the cost categories used by each source [2] [6].