I visited the glittering Greek island of Mykonos, the summer destination of choice for billionaires — and it's a very different experience if you aren't swimming in money

Harrison Jacobs

If you don't plan on spending a sea of cash, there are better places to go than Mykonos. 

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• The Greek island of Mykonos is known as a party capital and is a vacation hot spot for millionaires and billionaires.
• In 2018, I visited to see what the island would be like on both a frugal vacation budget and a higher-end vacation budget.
• Visiting during the peak summer months of July and August turned out to be an expensive, exhausting, and crowded experience, with every beach packed, lines out the door of most clubs and bars, and resorts that were hard to book and cost a fortune.
• While the resorts and beaches are gorgeous and the bars and clubs fun and lively, Mykonos feels like poor bang for one's buck unless you are a hard-partying clubber or drowning in money.
• There are a lot of less crowded, equally beautiful, and far cheaper Greek islands to visit nearby.
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Mykonos is not for the faint of heart.

The island is known as a glamorous destination for the world's wealthiest and most famous. Come the booming summer months of July and August, and the island swells with the A-listers, B-listers, C-listers, and D-listers, along with hundreds of thousands of vacationers, hard-partying dance-music junkies, and cruise-shippers.

Measuring just 33 square miles in size, the sunny and cool island is stuffed with hip boutique hotels, thumping beach clubs, haute couture shops, white sandy beaches, whitewashed alleyways, and swanky restaurants.

If this all sounds a little like the Spanish party island of Ibiza, I'll stop you right there: The cool rich kids have moved on. They're in Mykonos now. If there were any doubts, a look off any bay on Mykonos' coast reveals waters swamped with freshly scrubbed yachts, superyachts, and mega yachts.

Over the past several years, the number of international arrivals to Mykonos has nearly doubled.

But where does that leave the rest of the teeming masses jostling for a spot at Mykonos' glittering carnival?

For us, visiting Mykonos is a far different experience. The doors that simply open for the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Richard Branson, Bella Hadid, and the billionaire Stavros Niarchos III stay closed for mere mortals. A day at a beach club can empty out a savings account, and that's if you can even score a cabana at all. In the hottest of hot spots, the staff have the time to cater only to millionaires and billionaires.

At least, those were my assumptions before I stepped off the airplane to see what Mykonos was like for regular folks. Many proved to be right by the time I left the island a few days later. Other expectations, I found, were pleasantly incorrect.

Here's what it was like to visit the world's hottest party island in the peak of the season.

Gorgeous, glamorous, and luxurious, Mykonos is Greece’s answer to Ibiza.

Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider

In the 1950s, the island was barely a blip on the map. But in 1961, the first lady Jackie Kennedy visited, setting off the first wave of tourism from the world's monied and famous.

Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, and Rita Hayworth were just a few of the celebrities to vacation on the island in those days.

In the following decades, the island became known as a legendary underground party spot and a popular vacationing spot for the global LGBT community.

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In recent years, tourism to the island has exploded as global partiers and a new generation of celebrities and the ultrarich discovered the Grecian paradise after moving on from now-passé hot spots like Ibiza and Saint-Tropez.

I arrived on the island one evening in late July, the peak of the peak season.

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I was picked up by Michael, the driver for the guest house I would be staying at and a 50-ish "financial refugee" from Athens.

"The thing you have to understand about Mykonos," Michael said, in a riff that quickly turned Shakespearean, "is that Mykonos is absolutely nothing. There is nothing special about the island. It is a theater stage and you are the stars."

Before dropping me off, Michael informed me of a few tips to survive Mykonos.

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1. Pay attention to the northerly "meltemi" wind, which acts like "natural air conditioning" but can ruin a night if you don't carry a jacket.
2. Don't drink the water.
3. Mind the traffic: Roads are packed and there are no sidewalks.
4. Don't expect to get a taxi. There are only 31 on the island and more than 100,000 tourists. "It's a lottery," he said. You can rent a car or a quad bike, but with narrow winding roads, buses are the way for even those on a modest budget.

To give you a lay of the land, on the first night, I stayed in Ornos for my try at frugality. On the second, I was in Platis Gialos to check out a more luxurious option.

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For my first night and day, I wanted to operate on a frugal budget. Of course, in midsummer that's practically impossible in Mykonos.

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The cheapest (livable) place I could find was the Marinas Studios, near Ornos Bay, for 110 euros a night.

It was a fine basic room, about 10 minutes from Mykonos town. The only thing cheaper was a camping hostel near the beach for 90 euros a night. Reviews said it had bed bugs.

If it's not already clear, Mykonos is not the place to visit on your college Eurotrip and maybe not for the family vacation, either.

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Known as the "Island of the Winds," Mykonos is known for kitesurfing.

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A couple of dozen people in the water at Korfos Beach whipping and flying in the forceful gales. It looked like a ton of fun.

If adventure sports are your jam, there are plenty of places to make it happen on the island.