The flight to Alicante is full. Not just busy, full. The middle seats, the ones everyone avoids until they have no choice, are taken. There is a family from somewhere in the Midlands in row twelve with matching hand luggage, a group of lads in the back third who have already made friends with the cabin crew, and couples in every configuration scattered throughout. Outside the window, the Costa Blanca coastline appears below, pale and bright, and when the wheels touch down there is a ripple of applause from people who are simply glad to be here.
This is not the Alicante flight of five years ago.
Something has shifted in how Brits pick their summer holidays. Not dramatically, not overnight, but noticeably. The post-pandemic scramble to get anywhere at any cost has settled into something more considered. With the cost of living still biting, travellers are not cutting their holidays, they are getting smarter about them. The question is no longer just "where is warm?" It is "where is warm, affordable, interesting, and not completely overrun?"
TripAdvisor's Summer Travel Index 2026, built from the real search and booking behaviour of British travellers between February and April, shows which destinations are growing fastest year-on-year for summer trips. Spain still dominates, which will surprise nobody. But dig into which parts of Spain, and which other destinations are climbing fast, and a more interesting picture appears.
Here is where UK travellers are actually heading this summer, and what the pull is for each one.
Alicante: Spain's Overlooked City Finally Gets Its Moment
If you asked most people to name Spain's most popular summer destination for British tourists, they would probably say Benidorm, Marbella, or Mallorca. The answer this year, according to TripAdvisor's index, is Alicante, ranked the top trending European destination for British summer 2026 travel.
Alicante has always been there in the background, slightly overshadowed by its louder neighbours along the Costa del Sol. But the city makes a strong case for itself the moment you arrive. It sits on the Costa Blanca, which gives you a different quality of light and a different pace to the overcrowded southern resorts. The old town wraps around the base of the Santa Barbara castle, which looks down over the harbour from a ridiculous height, and the Explanada de Espana promenade runs along the waterfront in a way that makes evening walks feel like something you have earned.
It was named Spain's Capital of Gastronomy in 2025, which sounds like a marketing certificate but actually holds up. The rice dishes here, the arroz a banda and the caldero del Mar Menor, are among the best you will find anywhere on the Mediterranean coast. The tapas culture is genuine rather than performative, and the market at Mercado Central has the kind of produce that makes you want to cook even when you are on holiday.
The practical case is equally strong. Flights from most UK airports are under three hours. The city's own beach, Playa del Postiguet, is immediately accessible and well-maintained. And relative to Marbella or even Malaga, prices remain reasonable, particularly if you base yourself in the city rather than the resort strips outside it.
The rise in interest makes sense. Alicante is what a lot of people have been looking for without knowing it existed.
Alvor: The Algarve Village That Beat the Algarve
Portugal has been a favourite for UK travellers for years, usually in the form of the Algarve's bigger names: Albufeira, Lagos, Vilamoura. What TripAdvisor's 2026 data shows is that a small fishing village just west of Portimao is now outperforming all of them in terms of growth.
Alvor is the kind of place that people who have been there tend to speak about quietly, as if sharing it too widely would ruin it. Cobbled streets, whitewashed houses, seafood restaurants that would embarrass most of the capital's fine dining options. The beaches around it, Praia de Alvor and Praia dos Tres Irmaos, regularly appear in lists of Europe's best, which is a claim made far too often about far too many beaches and is in this case actually warranted.
The Algarve as a region recorded 2.38 million overnight stays in September 2025 alone, which tells you that Portugal's southern coast is not a secret. But Alvor within that offers a different version of the experience. It is not a resort. It functions as an actual village that accepts visitors graciously rather than existing for them. The estuary on its western edge provides a flat-water alternative to the Atlantic surf, good for kayaking and paddleboarding when the ocean gets feisty.
For UK travellers already sold on the Algarve but tired of the same strip, Alvor is the natural upgrade.
Ksamil: Albania's Answer to the Greek Islands (At a Fraction of the Cost)
Until fairly recently, Albania did not register in most British travellers' thinking at all. That is changing faster than almost anywhere else in Europe.
Ksamil sits in the far south of Albania, just above the Greek border, on a stretch of coastline that in terms of raw beauty gives the Ionian Islands serious competition. The water is the same colour. The sand is the same quality. The crowds and the prices are not remotely the same.
The village is still small enough that it functions on a human scale, with a handful of beach bars, local restaurants serving byrek and taverna-style grilled fish, and an atmosphere that feels more like the Greek islands did twenty years ago than they do now. The ancient ruins of Butrint, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are twenty minutes away by road and routinely uncrowded. Lake Kerkyre sits behind the town and provides a contrasting landscape to the coast.
Getting there requires slightly more planning than a charter flight to Spain. Most routes go via Tirana and then a drive south, which takes around four hours. A growing number of travellers are combining Ksamil with Sarande, Gjirokaster, and the Albanian Riviera into a longer road trip that is probably the most interesting alternative to the Greek islands that Europe currently offers.
It will not stay this way for long. The growth in bookings is the signal that the window is open now.
Krakow: The City Break That Has Not Inflated Itself Into Irrelevance
The European city break market has a problem. The cities that used to offer great value, Prague, Barcelona, Amsterdam, have been discovered so thoroughly that a weekend there now costs roughly what a week elsewhere would. Budget airlines made everywhere accessible and pricing followed interest.
Krakow, according to TripAdvisor's 2026 index, is trending strongly among British travellers as one of the fastest-growing city break destinations. The reason is fairly simple: it is still genuinely affordable, it has an extraordinary old town, and it offers a cultural and historical density that rivals anywhere in Europe.
The Rynek Glowny, Krakow's main market square, is one of the largest medieval squares in Europe and the kind of place that rewards just sitting in it. The Wawel Castle complex above the city looks over the Vistula River with an authority that the setting completely earns. Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter, has become the city's most interesting neighbourhood, full of independent restaurants, bookshops, and bars that have the energy of somewhere that knows it is good without needing to shout about it.
A meal in Krakow still costs between five and ten euros at a decent restaurant. A hostel bed averages twelve to twenty euros a night. For a weekend away that does not require taking out a financial position on your return, it remains one of Europe's most honest propositions.
The Longer Short-Haul Turn
One of the more significant trends in 2026 is what easyJet's Great British Holiday Audit calls the reframing of "short-haul." Brits are increasingly willing to take flights in the five to six hour range, treating the extra time in the air as a reasonable trade for better value and more interesting destinations.
The beneficiaries are Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, and Cyprus. Morocco, particularly Marrakech and the Atlas Mountains, is seeing booking growth driven by travellers who want the sensory intensity of a place that feels genuinely unlike home. Tunisia, specifically the island of Djerba, is seeing a twelve percent year-on-year booking increase according to easyJet's data. Turkey and Cyprus offer the Mediterranean beach experience with more budget headroom than Spain provides at its popular resorts.
For UK travellers who have spent years defaulting to Malaga or Alicante, the question being asked in 2026 is: if I add ninety minutes to my flight time, what does that unlock? The answers are increasingly compelling enough that the habit is changing.
The Inter-railing Comeback
Not every trend points toward sun and beaches. One of the most striking data points in the ABTA 2026 Travel Trends report is what has happened to rail travel among younger British travellers. Train and inter-railing trips have more than doubled among eighteen to twenty-four year olds over the last three years, rising from five percent in 2023 to twelve percent in 2025, with twelve percent planning to book this type of holiday over the coming year.
The drivers are a mix of cost consciousness and values. Rail travel in Europe has improved significantly in terms of connectivity and journey time on key routes. The carbon footprint argument, which ten years ago felt like something people said rather than something that influenced actual behaviour, appears to be genuinely shaping decisions for a generation that grew up with that conversation.
The routes doing well are the ones that reward the time investment: the Benelux circuit from London via Eurostar, the Eastern European run through Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and Krakow, and the Italian peninsula route from Milan through Florence and Rome to Naples. Luxury rail is also growing at the higher end of the market, with the restored Orient Express launching a Paris to Amalfi Coast route later in 2026, though that is a different proposition to a Eurail pass and a hostel booking.
For younger British travellers in particular, interrailing is being reframed not as a budget fallback but as the trip itself.
The Honest Case for Off-Peak
Running through all of this is a thread that the data supports consistently: the move away from August as the default holiday month. The traditional logic of booking the same two weeks every year because that is when school is out is losing ground among adults without school-age children, and even among some families willing to pay school-absence fines for the financial saving.
Flights to Spain in late September are a fraction of the August price. The same hotels are quieter, the same beaches are calmer, and the weather in most Mediterranean destinations is arguably better. Early May and October offer shoulder-season pricing with summer-adjacent temperatures across most of southern Europe.
The travellers getting the best deals in 2026 are not necessarily the ones finding the cheapest destinations. In many cases they are simply the ones who moved their trip four weeks in either direction from peak season.
What This Summer Actually Looks Like
The picture that emerges from the trends is one of a British travelling public that has grown more sophisticated without becoming more complicated. People still want sun, food, interesting places, and a reasonable price. What has changed is a greater willingness to look slightly beyond the obvious answer to each of those requirements.
Alicante instead of Benidorm. Alvor instead of Albufeira. Ksamil instead of Santorini. Krakow instead of Prague at peak prices. Morocco instead of Majorca.
None of these are especially radical departures. They are small adjustments that compound into a significantly better holiday for largely the same money. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what smart travel has always been.