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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Josh Halliday and Olivia Lee

Britons increasingly swapping Med’s busy hotspots for ‘destination dupes’

View of Kotor in Montenegro, with church and houses in the foreground on a hillside, above a bay and with mountains in the distance
Kotor in Montenegro. Flights to the country from the UK rose by 164% in 2024. Photograph: SCStock/Getty Images

It will take more than a TikTok trend to break Britons’ love affair with Mediterranean beaches. But latest figures show travellers are increasingly swapping Málaga for North Macedonia and Benidorm for the Balkans as part of a social media craze for “destination dupes”.

Flights from the UK to Bosnia and Herzegovina soared by 284% in 2024 compared with the previous year, while trips to Montenegro increased by 164%. Getaways to Albania – billed by some as “the new Croatia” – rose by 61%, according to an analysis of Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) data.

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