This guide is part of the Love Travel Planning Platinum Roadmap. It relates to Stage 2 of the Roadmap – Define the What. If you’ve already worked out who you’re travelling with, and you know that the coast is calling to you, then you’re in the right place.
We’ll walk you through the practical decisions that shape a coastal trip booking; from choosing the right style for your group, to timing your trip around crowds and price, to thinking about the safety and insurance considerations most travellers only consider once they’re already there.
This guide is part of the Love Travel Planning Platinum Roadmap. It relates to Stage 2 of the Roadmap – Define the What. If you’ve already worked out who you’re travelling with, and you know that the coast is calling to you, then you’re in the right place.
We’ll walk you through the practical decisions that shape a coastal trip booking; from choosing the right style for your group, to timing your trip around crowds and price, to thinking about the safety and insurance considerations most travellers only consider once they’re already there.
There’s a powerful feeling of reset which you often get when you visit the coast. The sound of waves, the smell of iodine in the air, sand between your toes. It’s no accident that beach holidays consistently top the list of what British travellers actually want to book when they have time off.
Whether you’re dreaming of a fortnight on a Greek island, a charming long weekend in Cornwall, or a family friendly adventure on the Algarve, a well planned coastal holiday can be one of the most restorative trips you can take.
Love Travel Planning disclosure
Before we get into coastal adventures, we should be honest about something. At Love Travel Planning we don’t tend to do all-inclusive resorts, or book via a travel agency. We prefer to put trips together ourselves and plan the exact coastal holidays that we want. We find this gives us more independence and a more immersive experience. We can choose where to eat each evening, find the quieter corners that the brochures don’t mention, and feel genuinely connected to a place rather than sealed off from it in a resort.
However, if all-inclusives are your thing, that’s absolutely fine, they can work brilliantly for some families and trips, if that’s your preference. There’s plenty of excellent content out there written by people who love that style of travel; just not on Love Travel Planning..
We’ve planned a lot of coastal holidays as a family over the years, chasing winter sun in Mexico, warm summers in Spain and Croatia, and plenty of UK staycations in between. This guide is built from that experience, not from a press trip itinerary.
Beach holidays remain the most popular type of trip taken by UK travellers, with 48% having taken one in the past year, narrowly ahead of city breaks at 47% (ABTA Holiday Habits 2025-26 Report).
A coastal holiday is usually centered around a particular base location. You choose a base on or near the sea, settle in for a few days or a couple of weeks, and use that spot as the foundation for everything else. Unlike a road trip, where movement and variety are a focal point of the trip, a coastal holiday is built around a single place, with the sea at the centre of it.
That doesn’t mean you have to stay glued to the beach. In our experience, our best coastal holidays have involved exploring the surroundings in the early morning, enjoying a couple hours of sun for mid-morning, then some activity based experience, and finally having a lovely meal in the evening; or, alternating a beach day with an activity or exploration day.
It’s worth being honest with yourself early on about what you actually want from a coastal trip. A beach holiday built around watersports is a very different beast to one centred on seafood, coastal walks and reading books. Knowing that before anything else, will shape every decision that follows – destination, accommodation, timing, budget and activities.
Our Roadmap puts the who before the what for a reason, and a coastal holiday is no exception. The same destination, the same beach, even the same accommodation can be a brilliant trip, or a difficult one, depending on who’s actually with you.
A coastal holiday that works beautifully for a couple on their own can fall apart under the weight of school holidays, different energy levels, or teenagers who need more than a beach to keep them engaged. Before you choose a style of coastal trip, get honest about who you’re planning for.
For families with little ones, the beach itself is an activity, and that’s a wonderful thing. But, the practicalities matter enormously. You want safe, shallow, sheltered water for paddling and swimming. Sandy beaches rather than shingle. Facilities nearby, like toilets, somewhere to get lunch, a lifeguard stretch of water.
Destinations like Majorca, the Algarve, Menorca, and parts of the Greek Islands (Corfu, Rhodes, Crete) tick these boxes reliably. For UK options, we always found Devon and Cornwall to be a great beach holiday for young children.
And, we aren’t the only ones. 83% of adults aged 16 to 64 planned to visit the UK coast in summer 2024, with 40% expecting to go three or more times (RNLI – Basics Research Water Safety Survey, 2024).
Closeness to the beach from your accommodation matters more than you might think with young children, the further you are, the more gear you’re carrying and the harder every spontaneous beach trip becomes. We’ve learned this the hard way trying to balance body boards, deckchairs and picnic baskets across dunes to a sandy beach!
Teenagers are wonderful travelling companions if you play to their strengths. Independence matters; the ability to wander off, find their own coffee (or macha) shop, maybe join a surf lesson without mum watching from the shore. The activity also matters. A beach with decent waves, a town with evening life, a snorkelling site within reach, these are the things that turn a beach holiday from something tolerated into something genuinely enjoyed.
Destinations with a bit of energy and variety are places like Lanzarote, Fuerteventura for surfing, the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, or somewhere further afield like Perth in Australia.
For more on how teenage trips differ from family travel at other stages, see our full travelling with teenagers guide.
With the freedom to travel outside school holidays comes the ability to visit coastal destinations at their absolute best. Shoulder season (late May, early June, or September & October) in Greece or Croatia, is genuinely a different experience to August. With quieter beaches, cooler temperatures, easier restaurant bookings, and prices that reflect a drop in demand. For couples and empty nesters, a quieter atmosphere, a room with a view and a slower pace often beats the liveliest resort town.
A group beach holiday introduces its own planning dynamics, like coordinating budgets, balancing what everyone wants to do, finding accommodation large enough to house everyone without it costing a fortune.
Villa-style rentals through Airbnb or specialised villa companies tend to work best, giving everyone their own space white keeping the social element intact. The beach is the natural meeting point; the villa is where you decompress. Shared cooking a few nights a week at the villa can also cut the cost of a group trip significantly.
With the who clear, the what gets easier. Not all coastal holidays are the same, and choosing the right style at this stage is one of the most useful things you can do to avoid planning a trip that doesn’t quote land for the people who are actually going. Here’s how we break them down:
The holiday most of us imagine when we close our eyes; warm temperatures, a sandy beach, clear water, and lots of time to do very little. This style suits families with younger children who want predictability and safe swimming, couples looking to switch off from work, and anyone who just needs a proper rest.
These would be the typical British summer destinations, like the Mediterranean – Greece, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey. As well as places further afield like Cancun, Florida etc. The key planning decisions here are around beach quality (sandy versus shingle, sheltered versus exposed), swimming safely (no sharks or jellyfish), and how much shade and facilities are nearby.
If you’d rather be in the water than next to it, an active coastal holiday shapes everything differently. Surfing, paddleboarding, kayaking, snorkelling, coasteering, wild swimming, cycling coastal paths – these are the experiences that define the trip rather than accompany it.
Destinations like Cornwall, the Algarve, the Canary Islands, and parts of Sri Lanka or Australia are particularly well suited. The planning focus shifts to finding accommodation near decent breaks or launch points, and booking instructors, or equipment hire well in advance.
Some of the most extraordinary coastal experiences we’ve had come from wildlife watching – dolphins off the Tasmanian coast, puffins on the Farne Islands, sea turtles nesting in Costa Rica, whale watching off Bremer Bay. The coast is one of the richest wildlife environments on the planet. This style tends to involve more planning around specific seasons, as wildlife activity is often tightly tied to time of year. It also pairs brilliantly with photography, which our family has built into almost every trip we take.
For more information, explore our Wildlife experiences.
Fishing villages, harbour towns, ancient ports and coastal markets – some of the most interesting food and history you’ll find anywhere sits right on the shoreline. A cultural coastal holiday might involve a sailing town on the Adriatic, a wine-producing region on the Italian coast, or a historic Cornish fishing village. Accommodation tends to be a boutique hotel, self catering cottage or camping, with the experience being more about the people and food than anything else.
Timing a coastal holiday well is one of the most valuable decisions you can make, and it’s one that’s often driven by circumstances (school holidays, annual leave) rather than choice. But, understanding what each season actually means for a coastal destination helps you make the most of whichever window you have.
Summer is the obvious choice for a beach holiday, and for very good reason; the longest days, the warmest water, the most reliable sunshine. For families tied to school holidays, this is usually the only option, and, for many UK destinations, it’s when the coast is at its peak.
The trade-off, however, is peak prices, busier beaches, accommodation that books up months in advance, and on popular stretches of coastline, an experience that’s rather different to the brochure photography.
If you’re going in summer, book early. The difference in both availability and cost between booking in January and booking in May for a July and August trip can be significant.
Flying in August now costs an average of 167% more than flying in January, the cheapest month, up from 99% in 2019 (Which? Analysis for Office for National Statistics data 2025).
For those with any flexibility, the shoulder seasons are genuinely where the best coastal holidays happen. The crowds thin, the prices drop, the restaurants have space without a reservation, and you often get better weather than you might expect.
Greece and Croatia in September are warmer than a British summer day; the Algarve in May is usually glorious. The sea temperature is the main concession – you lose a few degrees of warmth in the water, which matters more for some trips than others.
For empty nesters, young adults, or couples without school-aged children, this is the sweet spot we’d always recommend planning around first.
‘Winter sun’ is a category in its own right for UK travellers, and the Canary Islands – especially Lanzarote, has built its entire tourism industry around this. We went quite a few years ago at Christmas, when our eldest was in his early teens, and still mentions the fact they cooked an entire chicken on a volcano!
Flight times from the UK are short (around four hours), temperatures in December and January are reliably mild, and the islands work well for families, couples and groups alike. They won’t deliver peak-summer heat, but on a grey January afternoon back home, a Canarian beach in 20 degree sunshine feels like nothing short of luxury.
For those happy to travel further, Miami, the Yucatan Peninsula, Barbados, Cape Town, Dubai, Australia all offer reliable winter beach options. The trade off here is the longer flights and the cost and jetlag that comes with long-haul travel.
The British coast is beautiful, underrated and far more varied that many people give it credit for. Yes, the weather is unpredictable. But Cornwall in October, the Northumberland coast in May, or the Gower Peninsula in early September can be spectacular.
There is something about a blustery coastal walk followed by fish and chips that feels subsequently satisfying in a way a Mediterranean beach simply can’t replicate. UK coastal holidays have grown significantly in popularity, and the quality of accommodation, food, and visitor experience has risen with it.
When our kids were much younger, we would spend summer, upon summer, camping around Padstow in Cornwall. We don’t say this lightly, but they were some of the most iconic trips we have ever taken. If we were to go back now, we would definitely go in late September, as one of the very few negatives about Cornwall was that it was so busy in peak summer!
By the time you’ve worked out who you’re travelling with, what style of holiday suits you, and when you can realistically go, the question of where to go starts to answer itself.
Europe remains the natural first choice for most UK travellers, and the range is extraordinary – from the Chic beaches of the South of France, to the warm, calm Adriatic, the wild surf beaches of Portugal’s west coast to the powder-sand coves of the Greek Islands.
Long haul coastal destinations require a different level of planning, as longer flights mean longer trips to make the journey worthwhile, and the budget implications are significant. But, the experiences can be extraordinary. The Caribbean, Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and Australia’s east coast all offer coastal experiences that simply don’t exist in Europe.
A few things we’d always emphasise for long-haul beach holidays is; check the rainy season dates carefully, as a week in a tropical destination during monsoon can be a very different experience; consider self-catering accommodation to manage costs on longer trips; and factor in travel insurance that specifically covers the activities you’re planning.
If you’re travelling with a severe food allergy, long-haul coastal destinations need extra thought. We travel with a severe peanut allergy in our family, and it’s one of the main reasons we still haven’t managed a family trip to Thailand. The prevalence of peanuts in the cuisine, combined with the language barrier and the distance from major medical facilities at some of the most appealing beach destinations, has kept it on hold for now. Better to plan a trip that works than to brave one that won’t.
The United Kingdom deserves its one consideration rather than being treated as a fallback. From the wide sandy expanses of Northumberland to the dramatic cliffs of Pembrokeshire, the family friendly coves of South Devon, to the wild Atlantic surf of north Cornwall, the variety is remarkable, and the food has caught up with the scenery in a way it hadn’t twenty years ago.
The two practical considerations for UK coastal holidays are weather and booking timing. Peak summer in popular destinations like Cornwall books up almost as far in advance as European destinations now, so don’t leave it. And a plan B for wet weather is always worth having – most UK coastal regions have excellent inland alternatives within a short drive.
Beach holidays can span the full cost spectrum, from a self catering week on a UK campsite for a few hundred pounds to a luxury Dubai villa that costs more than most people’s mortgages. What matters is understanding where the money goes on a coastal trip, so you can make conscious decisions about where to spend and where to save.
The biggest cost drivers on a coastal holiday are flights (or driving costs), accommodation, and eating out every day – each of which can be controlled. For example, flying in shoulder season versus school holidays can save a family of four hundreds of pounds on flights and accommodation alone. Choosing self-catering accommodation and cooking free or four evenings out of seven cuts the eating out bill dramatically without sacrificing the experience.
According to the Post Office Travel Money beach barometer, the cost of a basket of holiday essentials at popular Mediterranean destinations can vary by more than 100% between resorts, making destination choice the single biggest budget lever after season.
Your best options would be, UK coastal self-catering or camping, Canary Islands in winter on a package deal, or early season bookings in Portugal or Spain. Budget coastal holidays work well when you’re flexible on timing, happy to self-cater, and not dependent on school holiday windows. Some of our most memorable coastal trips (like the ones to Padstow) have been among the most modest in cost.
A well-located apartment or villa in Greece, Croatia, or Portugal in shoulder season; a comfortable hotel in Split; a week in Ibiza with a hire car. Mid-range is where the best value tends to live, with enough comfort to enjoy the trip without paying the premium that comes with luxury positioning. Allocate more of the budget to accommodation location and key activities, and less to restaurants by mixing self-catering with eating out.
The premium coastal experience, with a private villa on The Palm in Dubai, a Maldives overwater bungalow, a private lodge in Hvar with a beachfront – requires significant investment but can deliver once-in-a-lifetime memories.
If you’re planning a luxury beach holiday, we’d always recommend spending the most on accommodation as it defines the experience, then use reward schemes like Avios, Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, to stretch the flight and beach budget further.
Long haul beach destinations are where a well-built Avios or airline miles balance can make a significant difference. Our family has used Avios to significantly reduce the cost of flights to destinations we wouldn’t have been able to justify otherwise. The key is collecting consistently, with credit card spend, energy bills, shopping, over a long enough period to accumulate meaningful balances. It’s not glamorous planning, but it works.
With your destination, timing, travel group, and budget taking shape, this is the point where you need to commit to the adventure. Two things matter here – choosing the right accommodation for the way you want to spend your time, and booking the activities that will sell out before you arrive.
For coastal holidays, the location of your accommodation shapes the whole trip more than for almost any other style. A beautiful villa twenty minutes from the beach is a very different holiday to a simple apartment two minutes from the beach, particularly with children or a group. Our broad rule is to spend more on location than on luxury. A modest place near the beach almost always beats a fancier one further away.
From most of our coastal holidays we use Booking.com or Airbnb depending on the trip. Booking.com for short stays where flexibility matters, Airbnb for longer self-catering weeks where we need space & a private kitchen. We will purchase these through the Avios portal. If there aren’t any appropriate self-catering options, we will use Hilton through the Hilton Honors scheme. For larger groups, we use Oliver Travels villa rentals.
Activities should support the type of coastal holidays you’ve chosen, and definitely not overwhelm it. A balanced beach holiday mixes a few must-do experiences with breathing room to be lazy. Always check reviews on Trustpilot, Tripadvisor, Google or GetYourGuide before booking – the best insights come from people who have already done these experiences.
We use GetYourGuide for almost all of our pre-trip activity research and booking. It gives a clear picture of what’s genuinely popular at a destination, provides honest reviews, and allows free cancellation on many activities, which matters when coastal weather can change plans at short notice.
We also have the app on our phones for spontaneous bookings while we’re actually there, which has saved more than one rainy afternoon from turning into a nothing day. Our top recommendation however, is to do a walking tour during the first full day you have at your location, this really helps with grounding yourself within the town/city/region.
Packing for a beach holiday looks straightforward, but there are a surprising number of things people consistently forget or underestimate. Sun protection is the obvious one – not just sunscreen (reef-safe if you’re going to be snorkelling) but hats for children, sun shirts for a day on the water, and after-sun for the evenings.
One of the best (and most used) purchases we’ve made recently are water shoes, used when beneath the waves it’s rocky, or there are sea urchins. Our entire family are advocates for the brand ‘Tropic Feel’ (we are not sponsored). A dry bag is also invaluable for boat trips or kayaking days.
For families managing a food allergy, as we do, packing for a beach holiday involves a few extra layers of planning, especially if the sufferer is young. Self catering accommodation reduces the risk significantly, and we always travel with our allergy translation cards to use when eating out. We cover this more detail in our allergy-aware travel section.
The best coastal holidays are planned with a quiet confidence that comes from knowing you’re prepared. That doesn’t mean obsessing over every detail, it just means making sure the things that really matter are covered, so you can actually relax when you get there.
Travel insurance for a coastal holiday is not complicated…until it is. The moment you add watersports to your plans, a standard policy may not be enough. This catches quite a lot of British travellers out.
In fact, a quarter of UK people who went on holiday abroad in 2025 did so without travel insurance, and the average travel insurance claim now stands at £1,724 (ABTA Association of British Insurers, 2025).
For activities like jet skiing, parasailing, coasteering, or scuba diving beyond a recreational level, most standard policies either exclude cover entirely or apply significant restrictions. Before you book any of these on a beach holiday, check your policy documentation, not just the summary, the full wording – and add the relevant sports cover if needed. We have a more in-depth guide on watersports experiences.
If you are travelling with a pre-existing medical condition, make sure it’s declared properly. And, if you’re travelling with a severe food allergy, it’s worth checking whether emergency treatment linked to an allergic reaction is covered at your specific destination.
The coast is one of the most enjoyable environments in the world. It’s also one where complacency can have serious consequences. We say this not to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm for a beach holiday, but because the statistics are stark and being informed makes a real difference.
In 2024, there were 193 accidental water-related fatalities in the UK. Half of all accidental drownings occur when people had no intention of entering the water – through slips, falls or being swept in by waves (National Water Safety Forum – Water Incident Database, 2025).
The single most effective thing you can do at beach holiday destinations is swim at a lifeguarded beach and stay between the red and yellow flags. On unfamiliar coastlines, particularly those with tidal currents, rip currents, or unpredictable waves, this is not overcautious, it’s just common sense. The RNLI’s Float to Live advice is worth knowing regardless of how confident a swimmer you are – if you get into difficulty, float on your back, relax your breathing, and call for help.
For families with children, learn the beach flag system before you travel, it varies slightly by country but the principle is universal. Yellow and red flags indicate a lifeguarded zone. Red flags mean do not swim.
This is the one we’ve all had drilled into us at school. But, sun-related illnesses do derail beach holidays. Children in particular can burn very quickly in the Mediterranean or tropical sun, even on overcast days.
Use high-factor sun protection consistently, reapply after swimming, cover up during the hottest part of the day (generally 11am to 3pm), and take heat exhaustion seriously if anyone in your group shows signs of it. None of this is new advice, but it’s easy to underestimate how different strong southern sun is from what we’re accustomed to at home.
Coastal holidays are uniquely vulnerable to weather. A week of unforecast rain or unusually high winds can change the whole character of a trip, and on a beach holiday, there’s often less to fall back on than there would be on a city break or road trip.
When one of our guest writers, Smyto went to Croatia in the summer, his plan was to leave us in Dubrovnik, get the ferry to Hvar and then to Split. However, there was a very dramatic thunderstorm and forecast endless rain for the week, so they ended up missing Hvar, and spending 5 days in Split (makes for a very interesting read).
Before you travel, it’s worth having a handful of wet-weather ideas in your back pocket; an inland town worth a day trip, a good museum, an indoor activity that would appeal to the whole group. It won’t save a holiday that gets washed out, but it stops a bad weather day from feeling like a complete loss.
It does depend entirely on where you’re going and who you’re travelling with. For families tied to school holidays then July and August are your friends – but they come with the highest prices and busiest beaches.
For anyone with flexibility, shoulder season (May-June and September to October) offers a better balance of weather, cost, and experience for most European coastal destinations. For winter sun, either check out the Canary Islands or even Dubai, both are roughly 4 to 5 hours away.
A coastal holiday, as we plan them, is based around freedom and immersion. You choose your own accommodation, eat where you like, explore independently, and feel connected to a place. An all-inclusive on the other hand, provides everything within a single resort complex. Both have their merits, but this guide is written from the perspective of independent, flexible coastal travel, rather than all-inclusive packages.
It depends on the season and how you book. A UK coastal holiday in peak summer, particularly school holiday weeks in popular destinations like Cornwall, can cost more than a comparable week in Southern France, like Montpellier, once you factor in accommodation prices.
Outside peak periods, UK coastal holidays offer excellent value, particularly for self-catering. It’s worth also noting, seaside towns like Whitby offer amazing halloween experiences during October, but it will be more expensive to book. For continental Europe in shoulder season, the combination of lower flight prices and cheaper accommodation often makes overseas beach holidays more affordable than you might expect.
You’ve chosen your holiday style, a coastal trip. Now the Platinum Roadmap continues with the decisions that turn that intention into an actual trip:
For the broader context of where eco-tourism fits within Stage 2 of the Roadmap, see our holiday types guide.
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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