Krakow and Reykjavik topple Amsterdam and Barcelona as top city breaks

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Amsterdam and Barcelona have been deposed as city break favourites for British travellers to Krakow and Reykjavik, a number one journey organisation has revealed.

Kelly Cookes, chief business officer for Advantage Travel Partnership, informed The Independent: “Amsterdam and Barcelona are still up there, but are not driving the same kind of volumes.

“Krakow is mainly price-driven. We see Prague in there quite a lot because of price.”

Ms Cookes mentioned Reykjavik represented a novel various to conventional city break locations. “People want to try something different and they’ve done a lot of those traditional Amsterdams, Barcelonas,” she mentioned.

Paris and Rome stay standard, and Ms Cookes predicted that the French capital would see a surge of bookings due to what she referred to as “the Netflix effect”.

She mentioned the third season of Emily in Paris – a few Chicago advertising and marketing government who strikes to the French capital – will set off “a big boom” in gross sales of Paris city breaks.

Travellers are paying considerably extra for summer time 2024 bundle holidays than they did in earlier years. Partly they’re buying and selling up.

But demand from British travellers with household ties – the so-called “VFR market” – has pushed costs to some locations extraordinarily excessive.

Julia Lo Bue-Said, chief government of Advantage Travel Partnership, mentioned journeys to Cyprus within the college summer time holidays are “eye-watering extortionate”.

She informed The Independent: “The VFR market drives those high prices – just ask any of my relatives.

“Spain and Greece continue to offer great value due to the wide range of flights and types of properties available.

“Also Turkey is fantastic for families with the pound going even further once in destination.

“If you’re flexible where you want to go, then I would say that there is still great value to be had.”

Almost half of holidaymakers now ebook all-inclusive packages. The proportion bought by Advantage has risen from 35 per cent in 2019 to 47 per cent in 2024 – representing a rise of one-third.

To meet the demand, some Spanish resorts that historically provided solely breakfast or room-only lodging are laying on three meals a day as effectively as limitless drinks.