Hotel rooms for the Monaco F1 Grand Prix cost as much as $422K for the weekend as race fever hits the principality

Every year, the rich and the ultra-rich flock to Monaco for the F1 Grand Prix.

One of the oldest and most revered races in the calendar, Monaco has its own allure that goes far beyond the sport itself.

But that comes at a price.

And, as we’re about to find out, it is a very high price.

There’s one hotel in Monaco in particular that everyone wants to stay at

Several hotels have pricing that varies dramatically depending on whether you’re facing the action or not.

The most famous example is probably The Fairmont.

Located between the tunnel and the Casino, the Fairmont has some rooms facing the sea, while others overlook the hairpin turn.

If you booked a hotel room at Fairmont during the GP weekend, you can easily end up paying a 1,000 percent premium on the rooms that face the track.

Then we’ve got the Hermitage and Hotel de Paris, which are always expensive, but the price definitely goes up during the F1 weekend.

Both hotels, again, have rooms facing the track either directly (Hermitage) or sort of laterally (Hotel de Paris.)

Solution?

There probably isn’t one.

The Monaco GP is and always has been one of the most expensive GPs on the calendar.

And that’s likely never going to change.

Let’s crunch some numbers

Broadly speaking, there are four ways people attend the Monaco GP.

The least expensive is to get the cheapest tickets and sleep somewhere else, like Menton or Nice.

I’ve personally done it once, but it was still expensive and very inconvenient.

The ‘cheap seats’ are generally not literally seats – you can find yourself watching from the narrow hillclimb that takes you to the old town – and you’re so far away from the action you’d need the eyesight of an eagle to even recognize a McLaren from a Ferrari.

General Admission for the Rocher hill climb area costs around $120 to $150 for Friday, but jumps to around $300 to $350 for a Sunday-only ticket.

For a three-day Rocher pass, it still sits right around $400.

The good news is the hotels are still attainable.

Unlike Monte Carlo per se, hotel prices in neighboring towns do go up during the GP weekend, but not that crazily.

Around $200-$300 a night for a mid-level hotel is what you can expect.

The second way to do it, which is probably what you’d call the middle ground, is to invest a significant but not impossible amount of money in decent tickets.

And then you can book a hotel in Menton or Beausoleil (technically not Monaco, but practically it is) weeks or months in advance.

That way, you can also parcel out your expenditure.

Mid-tier Grandstand tickets (like Grandstand X or Grandstand G) range between $600 and $1,200 for the weekend.

An Airbnb or small apartment in Beausoleil will usually cost under $500 to $600 a night.

The third way is simply – apologies, this is going to sound brutal – to be rich.

Money no object, you can just spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for the weekend.

A three-night stay at The Fairmont with race track view will set you back at least $40,000-$50,000, while the Hotel de Paris, generally the most expensive all-year-round, can go up to $100,000 for the weekend.

Some sources are saying there are packages that go for up to $422,000 at an unnamed hotel this year.

The fourth way is to be rich, but with a boat.

That way, you can charter a yacht for hundreds of thousands of dollars for the whole weekend and watch from the port.

Or if you own a yacht, you can expect to pay at least $50,000 to moor it.

There’s also a fifth way to attend the F1 Grand Prix.

You can be a media person and go there ‘on business’.

But that’s an entirely different conversation.