The holiday style you choose matters more than most people think. The same destination, the same dates, the same companions can deliver a brilliant trip or a disappointing one depending entirely on the style of holiday you build around them. A week in Croatia as an all-inclusive resort holiday is a different experience to a week in Croatia as a road trip down the Dalmatian coast, even though the country is identical.
The holiday style you choose matters more than most people think. The same destination, the same dates, the same companions can deliver a brilliant trip or a disappointing one depending entirely on the style of holiday you build around them. A week in Croatia as an all-inclusive resort holiday is a different experience to a week in Croatia as a road trip down the Dalmatian coast, even though the country is identical.
This page sits at Stage 2 of the Love Travel Planning Platinum Roadmap – Define the What. It is for travellers who have already worked out who they are going with, and now need to decide what kind of trip to take. We walk you through the main holiday styles, how to choose between them, and where each one is most likely to deliver.
According to the ABTA Holiday Habits 2025-26 Report, 87 per cent of UK people went on holiday in the past year, with beach holidays (48 per cent) and city breaks (47 per cent) the two most popular formats, followed by countryside breaks, road trips and adventure holidays.
Love Travel Planning disclosure
The way we plan and write about holidays is independent and immersive. We do not cover all-inclusive resorts, package coach tours, or itineraries that book every meal in advance. We prefer planning it ourselves and choosing where to eat each evening, when to get lost on purpose, aiming to feel connected to a place rather than sealed off from it.
If a fully-organised package suits you better, that is absolutely fine. Plenty of travel blogs specialise in that style of travel and they will serve you better than this site. Everything that follows on this page (and on the individual holiday type it routes to) is written from the perspective of independent, immersive travel, regardless of which holiday style you eventually choose.
Stage 2 is the part where you decide the shape of your holiday, before committing to a destination, dates or budget. We call it Define the What. The Roadmap follows a deliberate order. Who you are travelling with comes first (Stage 1), because group composition shapes everything else. The kind of holiday you take comes second, because it shapes how you experience whatever destination you eventually choose.
Most travel sites skip this stage entirely. They jump from inspiration straight to destinations, which works fine if you already know exactly what kind of trip you want. For most people, most of the time, this leaves a critical decision unmade. Worth knowing now is that getting your holiday style right is the single most useful thing you can do to avoid a trip that looks great on paper but does not quite work in practice.
There are two ways of thinking about Stage 2. The style of holiday you take (a road trip, a coastal week, a city break, a camping trip), and the experiences you want within it (UNESCO sites, wildlife, watersports, food and wine). Most trips combine both. We treat them as two related but distinct decisions, with their own dedicated pages.
Holiday styles and experiences are two different lenses on the same Stage 2 decision. They work together, but they answer different questions.
A holiday type is the structural shape of the trip. How you move, where you sleep, how the days are organised. A road trip and a city break are different types because they have fundamentally different rhythms, even if they cover the same destination.
An experience is what you do within that structure. UNESCO World Heritage sites, watersports, cycling, wildlife, food and wine. Most trips include several experiences, regardless of type. You might cycle on a city break, see wildlife on a road trip, do watersports on a coastal week.
Most planning errors at Stage 2 happen at this junction. People pick a destination they want to visit, then try to cram in every experience that interests them, then realise the type of trip they have ended up with does not actually suit how they want to travel. Get the type clear first, then layer the experiences in.
For the experiences side of this decision:
Here are the five main holiday styles we cover at Love Travel Planning. Each links to a dedicated guide with the full planning detail, including who it suits, when to go, where to go, what to budget, and how to book.
A base-led trip orientated around a single location near the sea. Coastal holidays suit travellers who want a clear focal point for the trip (the beach, the harbour, the coastal town) and the freedom to settle in for a week or two without constantly moving. Best for families with young children who need predictability, couples wanting a proper rest, and groups who want a shared base with options to do their own thing.
The format covers everything from a Greek island fortnight to a Cornish camping week, a Croatian sailing trip to a winter sun escape in the Canaries.
A short, urban-focused trip, usually 2 to 5 nights, built around a single city as both the destination and the experience. City breaks fit modern working life better than longer trips, suit a wide range of travelling companions, and scale up or down with budget more flexibly than almost any other format.
City breaks are not a compressed version of a longer holiday. They are their own format, with their own logic, and the best ones are planned with that in mind.
A movement-led trip where the journey is the holiday. Road trips suit travellers who want variety, freedom and the ability to change plans on the move. They work brilliantly for families with teenagers, couples and friends, and anywhere from a week-long touring loop to a multi-week adventure.
The format requires more planning upfront than a base-led trip (route, accommodation at multiple points, vehicle hire, fuel and tolls), but it delivers a quality of experience that no fixed-base holiday can match.
An outdoor holiday where you sleep in some form of temporary or non-conventional accommodation. The spectrum runs from a basic tent pitch in a Welsh field for £15 a night, all the way to a heated shepherd’s hut with underfloor heating. Camping is one of the most affordable holiday formats available, and one of the easiest to manage with food allergies because you control the kitchen.
Glamping (glamorous camping) sits at the other end of the spectrum and works particularly well for first-timers, families with young children, and anyone who likes the idea of camping but is honest about the reality of it.
A travel style focused on protecting the places you visit while still experiencing them properly. Eco-tourism overlaps with several other types (it can be coastal, road trip, camping or all of these) but is distinct in its emphasis on minimising impact, supporting local communities, and choosing operators with credible sustainability credentials.
It is not a niche format. It is a deliberate choice to travel differently, and one that grows in importance every year.
This is the most useful comparison we can make, and the one most travel sites skip entirely. Here is how the five main types compare across the variables that actually decide whether a trip will work for you.
| Type | Best for | Typical length | Pace | Independent travel | Cost level |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coastal | Families, couples, friends | 1 to 2 weeks | Slow | High | £ to £££ |
| City breaks | All groups, especially solo and couples | 2 to 5 nights | Fast | High | £ to £££ |
| Road trips | Couples, families with teens, friends | 1 to 3 weeks | Variable | Very high | ££ to £££ |
| Camping | Families, couples, friends, solo | 3 days to 2 weeks | Slow | Very high | £ to ££ |
| Eco-tourism | Conscious travellers, all groups | 1 to 3 weeks | Slow | High | ££ to £££ |
Three questions will get you most of the way to a clear answer:
A city break is fast and dense. A coastal week is slow and base-led. A road trip is variable. A camping trip is whatever you make of it. Be honest with yourself about whether you want stimulation or rest.
Road trips reward people who like change. Coastal holidays reward people who like consistency. City breaks you’ll end up walking 20,000+ steps a day. Camping and glamping can do either, depending on the site.
Different types behave very differently at different budget levels. A budget city break is a very different trip from a budget road trip. Know what you are actually working with.
Some of the best holidays we have done are hybrids. A road trip with a coastal base at the end. A city break followed by a few days in the countryside. A camping trip with a city day-trip in the middle.
Combining types works when you have at least 10 days, when there is no group member who would struggle with the change of pace, and when the destination supports both styles within reasonable distance. Croatia, Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, the western United States and New Zealand are particularly well-suited to two-style trips.
Stage 2 sits between Companions (Stage 1) and When (Stage 3), and it shapes the decisions in every stage that follows. Worth knowing how the connections actually work in practice.
Some types work brilliantly with certain companion combinations and poorly with others. Road trips with toddlers are hard work. Resort coastal holidays with teenagers can be claustrophobic. Camping with very young children needs careful site selection. We have covered the companion-by-companion detail on our companions page, with dedicated guides for each life stage including young children, teenagers, young adults, empty nesters, friends, and solo travel.
Holiday styles have natural lengths. A city break of more than 5 nights starts to drag. A road trip of less than a week feels rushed. Coastal holidays work well at one or two weeks. Knowing the right length for your chosen type makes Stage 3 much easier.
We have covered length of stay in detail on the length of stay page, with dedicated sections on long weekends, one-week trips, two-week trips, and three weeks or more.
Destinations work differently for different holiday styles. Croatia is brilliant for coastal and city breaks; less obvious for eco-tourism. Iceland works for road trips and adventure but is not naturally a beach destination. Once your type is clear, your destination longlist gets significantly shorter.
The destinations hub covers this in detail, organised by region and country.
Three planning errors come up again and again at this stage. All are avoidable.
This is the most common mistake by far. Someone wants to go to Italy. They book a fortnight in Rome. They then realise that what they actually wanted was a slower, coastal trip on the Amalfi Coast, with day trips into a city rather than 14 days of relentless city energy. The destination was right. The type was wrong. By the time they realise, they have already booked.
The fix is to define the type before you commit to a destination. Italy can deliver almost any holiday style. So can Spain, Portugal, France, the USA and most large countries. Knowing what kind of trip you want first means you can choose where in Italy to go, rather than trying to retrofit your trip to a generic Italy booking.
Travel content is dominated by a small number of highly photogenic holiday styles. Coastal villas, dramatic road trips, infinity pools at glamping sites. These look brilliant in photographs and on social media. They are not always what you actually want from a holiday.
Be honest with yourself about what you actually enjoy. A coastal holiday is the right answer for a great many travellers, but not for someone who needs constant stimulation and gets bored after two days at a beach. A road trip is wonderful for people who love driving, but exhausting for people who do not.
Hybrid trips can work, as we covered above. But two types in one week generally does not. Three types in one week is almost guaranteed to fail. Each type has its own pace and its own logistical needs, and switching between them too quickly costs you the benefit of any of them.
If you have 10 days or more, a two-type trip is realistic. If you have less, pick one type and do it properly.
A holiday style is the structural shape of the trip, like a road trip, coastal holiday, or city break. An experience is what you do within that structure, like wildlife watching, cycling, or visiting a UNESCO site. Most trips combine both. We treat them as two related but distinct decisions, with their own dedicated guides.
For a first family holiday with younger children, a coastal holiday or a glamping trip tends to work best. Both have a base-led structure, predictable rhythm, and good facilities for children. City breaks can work but require more careful planning. Road trips are usually too logistically demanding for a first family trip.
Yes, and it often works brilliantly. A road trip with a coastal base at the end, or a city break followed by a few days in the countryside, are both common combinations. The trick is having enough time (10 days or more) and choosing destinations where the two types are within reasonable distance of each other.
Camping is consistently the cheapest holiday style, particularly if you already own kit. A week’s UK family camping holiday can come in well under £500 including site fees, food and activities. Budget city breaks to Eastern European cities (Krakow, Riga, Tallinn) can also be done cheaply, often for £300 to £500 per person for a long weekend.
City breaks are arguably the best holiday style for solo travellers, with a strong solo-traveller culture in cities like Melbourne, Lisbon, Berlin, Vienna, Tokyo and Edinburgh. Coastal holidays can work for solo travellers but tend to be more couples-orientated. Road trips and camping are also viable solo formats but require more practical planning.
No. Different trips suit different types, and many travellers enjoy varying their format from one holiday to the next. The Roadmap is designed to be reusable. Each trip starts from Stage 1 again, with the type decision shaped by who is coming and what everyone wants from that specific trip.
Eco-tourism is unusual in that it overlaps with several other types rather than sitting cleanly alongside them. A trip can be a coastal eco-tourism holiday, a road trip with eco-tourism principles, or a camping trip in a sustainable site. We treat eco-tourism as its own type because the planning decisions (operator certifications, carbon impact, community benefit) are distinct enough to warrant their own guide.
You know who you are travelling with. Now is the time to decide what kind of trip to take. The five main holiday styles we cover, each with a dedicated planning guide:
For the experiences side of Stage 2, see our experiences guide, covering UNESCO sites, watersports, wildlife, cycling, walking, food and wine.
When you have your type clear, the next stage is timing. Move on to Stage 3: Plan the When.
This page is part of the Love Travel Planning Platinum Travel Planning Roadmap, a complete step-by-step framework for planning holidays that work for real families and real travel groups. Built from genuine travel experience, not press trips or sponsored itineraries.
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