Here's the answer: about $400, and it fits in a carry-on. Your phone is the A-camera, and nearly every big travel creator shoots primarily on one. Around it: a compact tripod for about $40, a $25 clip-on mic for verdicts in wind and lobbies, a $30 suction mount for windows on planes and trains (free footage the whole ride), a 1TB drive with a nightly offload habit, and a $20 collapsible diffuser if you film faces. If it doesn't fit the carry-on, it doesn't come.
The real production secret is a list, not a lens. Every trip owes you about 40 clips, known in advance: the arrival set (the untouched room, the threshold, the view reveal, your real first reaction in one take), the property set (the pool empty at open and crowded at noon, which is the truth), the verdict set (price cards, the number said to camera), and the story set (the ritual shot three days running, hands, feet, 30 clean seconds of local sound).
You capture them in four defined windows, about four focused hours across a three-night stay. The other 68 hours, you live, which is what keeps the person on camera worth watching. And shoot the flaws in the same windows: the mildew line, the construction noise. Owning them is what makes your praise worth quoting.
The full system is Volume 5 of our Viral Travel & Hotel Creator Guide.
Four windows. Forty clips. Sixty-eight hours of living.