Over Dh6,000 per child: UAE parents struggle to find affordable summer camps
Families are finding that keeping kids busy this summer — from coding workshops to sports camps — is becoming a struggle both financially and logistically.
With schools across the UAE heading into the long summer holidays from this Friday, working parents are faced with a perennial challenge — how to keep their children occupied in meaningful ways without breaking the bank.
Summer camps remain a mainstay of childcare and enrichment, but families from across the economic divisions say high prices are increasingly putting camp out of reach — especially for those with more than one child.
The most basic of programmes now begin at approximately Dh300 per week, while more specialist camps offering technology, sports and creative pursuits can exceed Dh6,000 a month — adding further to household budgets already stretched by inflation.
Rising Costs Prompt Earlier, Tighter Summer Planning
For many parents, it starts off with screen time and quickly expands to budgeting and logistics.
All they really seem to want to do is get their hands on the iPads once we leave the house, watch or game.. UAE expat Sai Bhagwat acknowledged that this remained one of his biggest concerns.
She is now deliberating on August camps carefully, with her family travelling in July. Skill-based camp not a do-the-same-old-thing painting/jumping-on-a-trampoline type place. I would rather that they learn something - pottery, podcasting, camera work or shoot and film something.
But a key consideration in the honing of choices ahead is cost. “It is about Dh900–Dh1,000 a week for each child".
With costs rising, parents are looking to skill-based camps
Other families are more interested in programmes that combine learning with play and want an approach geared more towards a specific field.
But for Dubai-based American expat Natalia Miranda, her son’s interests are driving this summer’s decisions.
She said, “I have a camp that I want to put him into, but it's mostly coding-based stuff because that's kind of the interest right now.
But looking back on her experience from last year, she said camps focused on technology and structure held a lot of value.
That was great for the kids who were computer literate. From coding to video game design, from podcasting to starting and running a YouTube channel. One week it was Minecraft, the next it was learning video production. All in all, it was a positive learning process,” she said.
Yet for some,even the most controlled options come at a hefty price.
A Moldovan expat, who is a mother of two, says, “Every summer I say that I will look for something cheaper but the prices are killing me and I know businesses think only about profit.
She is planning to register her children in a monthly blend of academics and sport camp for a month.
I'm signing my kids up for a mixed STEM and sports camp in July for one month at £120 — coding, robotics in the mornings — then football and swimming in the afternoons. Sounds great but that means, for the month it's approx Dh6,000 and more per child so roughly dh12-K-15-k between them both.”
However, she adds that structured camps remain the most feasible option during sweltering summer days despite the cost.
“It is an expensive undertaking for us but I also feel the summer in Dubai is tough, if you stay here you pay for proper camps or fight screen time all day.
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