Europe's Best Travel Dupes: Same Vibes, Half the Price

The dupe destination trend has been all over TikTok for the past two years, and honestly? It's one of the most useful things to come out of travel content in a long time. The idea is simple: instead of the expensive, overcrowded original, you go to somewhere that gives you the same vibe, the same core experience, and — most importantly — a much better time because it's not heaving with people who had the exact same idea as you.

I've tested most of these personally. Here's what actually works.

Santorini Dupe: Kotor, Montenegro

Santorini is extraordinary. It's also expensive (average accommodation £150–£250 a night in high season), overrun with cruise ship day-trippers, and increasingly difficult to enjoy without feeling like you're on a film set. Kotor is a genuinely stunning medieval walled city on Montenegro's Adriatic coast, with the dramatic mountain backdrop and the clear blue water you're actually looking for. Flights from the UK have expanded significantly — Ryanair and easyJet both fly to Tivat (20 minutes from Kotor) from around £60–£90 return. Hotels inside the old city walls cost £50–£80 a night. The food is brilliant and cheap. Nobody is pretending to be surprised by a donkey.

Amalfi Coast Dupe: The Albanian Riviera

The Amalfi Coast is beautiful, genuinely. It's also been on every travel influencer's grid since roughly 2015, it's about £180 a night minimum in season, and the roads are so narrow and busy in summer that you spend half your time stuck in traffic. The Albanian Riviera — particularly the stretch from Himara to Saranda — has the same turquoise water, the same dramatic cliffs, the same little fishing villages with excellent seafood restaurants. The difference is cost: accommodation is £35–£70 a night, a seafood dinner is £8–£12 a head, and you can walk a beach without shuffling sideways. Direct charter flights from the UK to Tirana have grown substantially. This is the one I recommend most strongly right now, before it stops being a dupe.

Amsterdam Dupe: Ghent, Belgium

Amsterdam is still brilliant. It's also been affected by overtourism to the point where the city has actively started trying to discourage bachelor parties and mass stag weekends. Accommodation averages £110–£160 a night. Ghent has everything you actually want from an Amsterdam trip: medieval canals, beautiful architecture, a brilliant café and restaurant scene, excellent cycling, and proper Belgian beer at Belgian prices (around €3–€4 a pint rather than Amsterdam's €6–€8). Flights to Brussels are cheap and frequent; Ghent is 30 minutes by train. Accommodation is £60–£80 a night for a good central option. It's one of the most underrated cities in Western Europe.

Prague Dupe: Krakow, Poland

Prague has a drinking tourism problem that's made the city centre genuinely unpleasant on Friday and Saturday nights, and prices in the tourist areas have caught up with Western Europe. Krakow has better medieval architecture, an intact old town that hasn't been turned into a bar crawl circuit, the extraordinary Wieliczka salt mine nearby, and Auschwitz-Birkenau if you want to add historical weight to your trip. Flights from the UK are frequent and cheap — often under £50 return from regional airports. Daily costs in Krakow are around 40% lower than Prague for the same standard of accommodation and food. It's not a dupe so much as a genuine upgrade in some respects.

Ibiza Dupe: Tarifa, Spain

Tarifa is Cadiz province's worst-kept secret — a windswept, bohemian town at the southernmost tip of Europe where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean. It has brilliant beaches (Playa de los Lances is one of the best in Spain), world-class kitesurfing, a charming old town, and a laid-back nightlife scene without the industrial-scale clubbing of Ibiza. Flights to Malaga or Jerez are cheap; Tarifa is about 90 minutes by bus from either. It attracts a noticeably more interesting crowd than the big resort towns, accommodation is significantly cheaper, and you can actually have a conversation in a bar without shouting.

Tuscany Dupe: Plovdiv, Bulgaria

This one's a stretch in terms of landscape (Bulgaria's interior is different from Tuscany), but hear me out. What people actually want from a Tuscany trip is: beautiful old buildings, excellent food and wine, warm evenings, local character, and not spending £200 a night on a farmhouse. Plovdiv delivers on almost all of those: it has one of the best-preserved old towns in Eastern Europe, an excellent contemporary food scene, Bulgarian wine that's genuinely worth drinking, and prices that make the whole thing feel absurdly affordable. Flights to Sofia are cheap; Plovdiv is two hours by bus. If you want architectural beauty and good eating without Western European prices, Plovdiv should be on your list.

One More: Dubrovnik Dupe: Split, Croatia

We've written about this at length elsewhere — but the short version is that Split has the Roman walls, the Adriatic water, the seafood, and the general brilliance of Dubrovnik at about 60% of the price and without the cruise ships. September is the move.

None of these are compromises. In most cases they're genuinely better trips than the original — less crowded, less expensive, and more authentically themselves because they're not yet performing for Instagram. The best time to go is always before everyone else figures it out.