A Different Kind of Holiday Finder: Find Somewhere That Actually Suits You

Published September 2026 · Last reviewed September 2026

Most holiday finders are very good at answering one question:

How cheaply can we get you somewhere sunny?

That's useful. It's just not always the question we're asking.

Sometimes we want to know whether the beach will be packed. Whether the resort goes quiet after dinner. Whether we'll be surrounded by British holidaymakers. Whether there's actually a town beyond the hotel gates.

And, occasionally, whether we've just paid to fly four hours somewhere that feels remarkably similar to Britain, only warmer.

That's the reason we built HolidayFilter.

It's a holiday finder for people who want to choose the kind of place they want to visit before they choose the actual place.

And yes, one of the things you can search for is fewer Brits.

Why finding the right holiday is harder than it should be

Most holiday search starts backwards.

You're asked to choose Spain, Greece, Portugal or somewhere else. Then you choose an airport, dates and budget. Finally, you're presented with hundreds of hotels.

But what if you don't know where you want to go?

You might know that you want a quiet beach, good local restaurants and somewhere warm in October.

You might want a lively town, but not somewhere dominated by nightclubs.

You might want all-inclusive, adults-only and less than four hours from Britain.

Or you might simply want to go abroad and feel as though you've actually gone abroad.

Traditional holiday search isn't particularly good at that.

The most popular destinations naturally appear again and again. Majorca, Tenerife, Lanzarote, Corfu, the Algarve and the Costa del Sol are popular for good reasons. They're easy to reach, have enormous amounts of accommodation and are well served by UK tour operators.

But popularity isn't the same thing as suitability.

That's the bit we're interested in.

A holiday finder that starts with what you actually want

HolidayFilter currently searches 530 destinations across beach, city and ski holidays.

Instead of starting with a destination, you can start with the things that matter to you.

Want fewer British holidaymakers? Choose Fewer Brits.

Want somewhere peaceful? Add Peace & Quiet.

Need a sandy beach, warm weather in May and a direct flight? Add those too.

You can filter by British tourist density, overall crowd levels, local feel and atmosphere, nightlife, food, beach type and beach crowding, temperature for the month you're travelling, flight time, direct flights, transfer time and budget.

Or you can simply describe the holiday you're looking for.

Try something like: "Quiet beach, good food, not too many Brits, warm in October and under £700."

HolidayFilter searches the destination database and suggests places that fit, rather than asking you to name the destination first.

That's the difference.

So how do we know where the Brits are?

This is one of the things we wanted to know ourselves.

There's an important caveat, though.

We don't pretend we can tell you that exactly 17.4% of the people around your hotel pool will be British. Nobody has reliable resort-level data that precise.

Instead, HolidayFilter gives every destination a relative British tourist density score.

We build that using a combination of ONS International Passenger Survey country data, Civil Aviation Authority flight volumes, published regional tourism statistics and our own destination research.

The result isn't intended to be a precise percentage. It's there to answer a much more useful question:

Is this somewhere with a particularly strong British holiday presence, or somewhere where British visitors are a relatively small part of the mix?

And you can search either way. Some people actively want somewhere familiar, where English is spoken everywhere and there are plenty of other British families. Others don't. Neither is right or wrong. They're just different holidays.

What happens when you search for fewer Brits?

This is where HolidayFilter gets interesting.

Change the criteria and you start seeing places that don't always appear near the top of conventional package-holiday searches.

Here are four examples.

Marsaxlokk, Malta

Malta has a long relationship with British tourism, so it might seem an odd place to start.

Marsaxlokk shows why looking at individual destinations matters. It's a working fishing harbour in the south-east of the island, known for its brightly painted luzzu boats and Sunday market.

Visitors certainly come here, particularly at weekends, so we're not going to call it undiscovered. But the atmosphere is very different from Malta's larger tourist centres such as Sliema and St Julian's. There's also excellent swimming nearby, including St Peter's Pool.

Aegina, Greece

Aegina is remarkably close to Athens. Ferries from Piraeus can get you there in under an hour, yet the island feels a considerable distance from the big international Greek resorts.

It's known for pistachios, fishing villages, small beaches and the remarkably well-preserved Temple of Aphaia.

Aegina receives plenty of visitors, including Athenians escaping the city, so this isn't an empty island. That's rather the point. Fewer Brits doesn't mean fewer people. It means British holidaymakers aren't necessarily the group defining the destination.

Çıralı and Olympos, Turkey

Turkey receives millions of British visitors, but they aren't spread evenly along the coast.

Çıralı and neighbouring Olympos sit away from the biggest package resorts on the Turkish Mediterranean. The area combines a long beach with the ruins of ancient Olympos and the Chimaera, where natural flames emerge from the hillside above the village. Loggerhead turtles also nest along this stretch of coast.

It isn't completely off the tourist trail and we wouldn't pretend otherwise. But it offers a very different holiday from staying in one of Turkey's enormous resort complexes.

Conil de la Frontera, Spain

Spain is Britain's favourite overseas holiday destination, which makes finding somewhere that feels distinctly Spanish slightly more interesting.

Conil sits on the Costa de la Luz, facing the Atlantic on Spain's south-western coast. It's a whitewashed Andalusian town surrounded by long sandy beaches, with a strong Spanish domestic tourism market and a very different atmosphere from the large international resorts farther east.

It gets busy in summer. Very busy, in fact. But that's another useful distinction: busy doesn't necessarily mean British. If you want somewhere genuinely quiet, combine the Fewer Brits filter with HolidayFilter's crowd filter.

Fewer Brits doesn't mean deserted

This distinction matters enough to repeat.

A destination can have very few British tourists and still be absolutely packed. A beach full of Spanish families in August qualifies as fewer Brits. It does not qualify as peaceful.

That's why HolidayFilter keeps the two measurements separate. British tourist density tells you something about who tends to visit. Crowd level tells you how busy the place is likely to feel. Beach crowding tells you something slightly different again.

Combine them and you can search for exactly what you mean. If what you really want is "somewhere quiet where there aren't many British tourists" — tell HolidayFilter both things.

How to use the HolidayFilter holiday finder

You don't need to work through every filter. Start with the one thing you care about most.

If you want…	Start here
Fewer British holidaymakers	Fewer Brits
Somewhere genuinely peaceful	Peace & Quiet
Less obvious destinations	Hidden Gem
A beach with some breathing room	Uncrowded Beach
Somewhere warm at a particular time	Choose your month + temperature
Several things at once	Describe your holiday in the search box

Then refine the results if you need to. You might start with Fewer Brits, then add September, sandy beach, direct flight and under four hours. Or just type: "Quiet Greek island in September with good food and fewer Brits."

The point isn't to use every filter. It's to discover destinations you might never have thought to search for.

A holiday finder shouldn't decide what a good holiday looks like

HolidayFilter isn't based on the idea that avoiding British people makes you a more sophisticated traveller. That would be ridiculous.

Sometimes familiarity is exactly what people want. If you're travelling with young children, having familiar food, English-speaking staff and other British families around can make life considerably easier. For someone else, that would be precisely the holiday they're trying to avoid.

Neither traveller needs to be told they're doing it wrong. They just need different search results.

That's what we think a good holiday finder should do.

Not tell you where everybody else is going. Help you work out where you should go.