Travel
Best beaches in the world are all in Europe: Portugal, Italy and Spain named traveller favourites
Portugal’s Praia da Falésia takes the coveted top spot on Tripadvisor’s ‘Best Beaches’ list
In a world where sustainability and natural beauty increasingly dominate travellers’ choices, Portugal’s Praia da Falésia emerges as the crown jewel, topping Tripadvisor’s prestigious Best of the Best Beaches list for 2024.
This impressive stretch of white sand and colourful cliffs was noted as “best for scenic walks and sunbathing” and is up from number six in 2023.
Europe prevailed in the other top spots, with Italy‘s Spiaggia dei Conigli in Lampedusa at number two and Spain’s La Concha Beach in San Sebastian in number three.
All three were recommended for spring trips.
Tripadvisor award puts the Algarve on the map
Praia da Falésia, located in the heart of the Algarve region, captured the coveted number one spot, enchanting visitors with its picturesque blend of white sands and dramatic, orange-coloured cliffs kissed by the Atlantic Ocean.
What sets Praia da Falésia apart is its pristine shoreline and commitment to sustainability. The nature park adjoining the beach protects its spotless condition, offering a sanctuary for local flora and fauna.
Praia da Falésia: What to know to plan your beach day
One of the most extensive beaches in the Algarve is the list-topping Praia da Falésia, which stretches almost six kilometres.
It extends to Albufeira’s Olhos d’Água neighbourhood in the west and shares borders with the resort town of Vilamoura to the east. Though it’s essentially the same beach, the narrower western end is known by a different name, Praia do Barranco das Belharucas.
While Praia da Falésia is located in the more touristy part of the Algarve, the beach remains largely untouched, with little development directly on its sandy shores and fragile clay cliffs.
Further from the beach, there are several resorts, hotels and beach clubs, including Anantara Vilamoura Algarve Resort, The Residences at Victoria and Domes Lake Algarve Autograph Collection.
If you’re looking for budget-friendly options, holiday apartments, vacation rentals, and guesthouses are available in the nearby towns of Albufeira and Vilamoura, where you’ll also find plenty of bars and restaurants.
How to get to Praia da Falésia
There are several ways to reach the Praia da Falésia area. Faro Airport (FAO) is the nearest airport, with a driving distance of approximately 30-40 minutes to the beach.
From Faro Airport, visitors can rent a car or use buses or taxis to reach their accommodation.
You can also travel to popular tourist spot Albufeira by train. The train station is about 5.5 kilometres from the old town centre.
To reach Praia da Falésia beach by bus, there is an infrequent service operated by the Vamus company that departs from Albufeira’s bus station to Praia da Rocha Baixinha.
If you have rented a car in Portugal, you can drive to the beach, where you’ll find parking.
The best time to visit Praia da Falésia
For sun worshipers, the summer months, from June to September, have the best weather and ideal swimming and water sports conditions.
However, you can also enjoy pleasant weather and fewer crowds during the shoulder seasons of spring (April to May) and autumn (October to November).
You might also find that accommodation and flights are cheaper if you travel off-peak.
Spiaggia dei Conigli: How to find the hidden beach
Italy’s Spiaggia dei Conigli came second on Tripadvisor’s best beaches list and is renowned for sea turtle sightings and diving.
The serene Spiaggia dei Conigli (Rabbit Beach) in Lampedusa is accessible only by boat or on foot via a short trail off the main road.
Although a little challenging to locate, the effort is worth it for clear waters and soft sands. Take any of the hourly buses from Lampedusa town if you don’t have your own transportation.
Because of the dreamy white sand and azure blue waters, the beach and its natural reserve are frequently likened to those in the Caribbean.
Rabbit Beach is one of the rare beaches in Italy where you can observe Caretta Caretta turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs and if you’re lucky, young turtles hatching.
For accommodation, travellers can choose from various hotels, guesthouses, and holiday rentals near the beach. Popular luxury hotels in Lampedusa include La Rosa dei Venti, La Calandra Resort, and Hotel Cupola Bianca for travellers looking for an upscale stay.
How to get to Spiaggia dei Conigli
Getting to Spiaggia dei Conigli involves travelling to the island of Lampedusa, situated in the Mediterranean Sea between Sicily and Tunisia.
In the summer, Lampedusa becomes more accessible via direct flights from mainland Italian cities like Rome and Naples, and there’s also a ferry service and frequent flights from Sicily.
La Concha Beach: One of Europe’s most photographed beaches
Coming in third on Tripadvisor’s top beaches list, La Concha Beach in San Sebastian is one of Europe’s most iconic and photographed urban beaches, renowned for its natural beauty and vibrant atmosphere.
Located along the picturesque Bay of La Concha, the beach has white sands, turquoise waters, watersports, and a long boardwalk, making it a popular destination for locals and tourists.
La Concha is incredibly well-equipped and has beach amenities, including toilets, showers, lockers and classic blue and white sunshades.
Several hotels are within walking distance of the beach, including Hotel de Londres y de Inglaterra, Zenit Convento San Martin and Hotel Arbaso.
How to get to La Concha Beach
Getting to La Concha Beach is easy, thanks to San Sebastian‘s well-connected transportation network. The city is hugely accessible by air, train, and road, and many hotels are also within walking distance of the beach.
San Sebastian Airport (EAS) is the nearest airport, offering domestic and international flights and San Sebastián railway station, also known as Donostia-San Sebastián, is the main railway station.
Best time to visit La Concha Beach
The summer months, from June to August, are popular times to visit and offer hot and sunny weather ideal for swimming, sunbathing, and water sports. During this time, the city comes alive with festivals, cultural events, and outdoor activities, creating a festive atmosphere.
The summer season attracts larger crowds, so if you want a chilled out beach experience, you should visit during the shoulder seasons of spring and autumn when the weather is still pleasant, and the city and beach are less busy.
How were Tripadvisor’s Best Beaches chosen?
Based on an analysis of all the reviews left on Tripadvisor for beaches globally over one year, the award reveals the beaches that were the highest rated by travellers who visited.
From rave reviews of dreamy views to unrivalled cleanliness to watersport-friendly seas, award-winners provided the best overall beach experiences.
Tripadvisor’s top three beaches are all in Europe
Other beaches in the top ten include Palm-Eagle Beach in Aruba, Grace Bay in Turks and Caicos and Manly Beach in Sydney, Australia.
Sarah Firshein, Head of Editorial at Tripadvisor, says, “Our top 25 winners alone encompass 18 countries across five continents.
The top three beaches are all in Europe, ousting the perennially popular Caribbean from those spots a sign that some travellers are eager to swap typical resort vacations for the coastlines of Portugal, Italy, and beyond.”
In the US, winners span eight states this year, from the northern coasts of Maine to the Pacific shores of Oregon, signifying that people all over the country have access to great beaches within driving distance.
However, Hawaii and Florida unsurprisingly shine with the most award-winning beaches – and Hawaii leads with ten winners.
Which other beaches made the list?
In addition to honouring the world’s top beaches, Tripadvisor introduced a new ranking of Sustainable Beaches, recognising destinations that exemplify a commitment to environmental conservation.
From the golden sand shores of Sandbanks Beach in the United Kingdom to the azure waters of Radhanagar Beach in India, these sustainable havens inspire travellers to tread lightly on the earth while soaking up the sun.
Travel
A 4-year cruise or a €1 house in Italy: Inside the schemes helping Americans skip Trump’s presidency
Searches by Americans for moving abroad soared in the 24 hours after the first polls closed, according to Google data.
Following the recent US election result, Google searches for ‘how to move to Europe’ increased by more than 1,000 per cent in some countries.
Searches by Americans for moving to Canada and Australia soared by 1,270 and 820 per cent respectively in the 24 hours after the first polls closed, according to Google data.
The interest in leaving the States has not gone unnoticed by marketing firms.
A residential cruise ship is now offering Americans a four-year ‘escape’ trip while a Sardinian village has relaunched its €1 house scheme.
Cruise company offers four-year escape from Trump
Cruise firm Villa Vie Residences is marketing a four-year round the world trip to Americans looking to skip Donald Trump’s second term as president.
The Tour La Vie programme offers passengers a stay of up to four years onboard while visiting 140 countries – which doesn’t include the US.
The irreverently named packages include a one-year ‘Escape from Reality’ cruise, a two-year ‘Mid-Term Selection’ option, a three-year ‘Everywhere but Home’ cruise, and the four-year ‘Skip Forward’ trip.
Guests would join the Villa Vie Odyssey, a residential cruise ship which set sail from Belfast in September, several months into its voyage.
“We came up with this marketing campaign before we even knew who would win. Regardless of who would have won, you would have half of the population upset,” CEO Mikael Petterson told US news site Newsweek.
“Quite frankly, we don’t have a political view one way or the other. We just wanted to give people who feel threatened to have a way to get out.”
Prices start at a little under $40,000 (€38,000) a year. For those opting for the full four-year escape, single-occupancy cabins start at $256,000 (€243,000) while double-occupancy costs up to $320,000 (€303,000).
The price includes all food and drinks (alcohol only at dinner), WiFi, medical visits, weekly housekeeping service and bi-weekly laundry.
Sardinian village relaunches €1 house scheme for Americans
In rural Sardinia, the village of Ollolai has revived its €1 house scheme, now targeting Americans exhausted by the election.
The homes-for-the-price-of-an-espresso offer has been relaunched for US citizens “worned [sic] out by global politics” and “looking to embrace a more balanced lifestyle”, local authorities write on the village’s website.
“Of course, we can’t specifically mention the name of one US president who just got elected, but we all know that he’s the one from whom many Americans want to get away from now and leave the country,” village mayor Francesco Columbo told US news site CNN.
“We have specifically created this website now to meet US post-elections relocation needs.”
Those needs include slowing down and recharging with Ollolai’s dreamy Mediterranean lifestyle.
“Nestled in pristine nature, surrounded by incredible cuisine, and immersed in a community with ancient traditions in the rare Earth’s Blue Zone, Ollolai is the perfect destination to reconnect, recharge and embrace a new way of life,” the website claims.
Available properties will soon be listed online with prices ranging from €1 for houses needing substantial renovations to €100,000 for those that are ready to live in.
This is not the first time the village in Sardinia has put houses for a pittance on the market. In a bid to halt a steep population decline, Ollolai began selling off abandoned homes in 2018 to people willing to carry out $25,000 (€24,000) of renovations within a three-year timespan.
Travel
Catalonia’s holiday rental ban may not be allowed under EU law as Airbnb pushes back
Catalonia has said they want to rid Barcelona of its 10,000 holiday lets in the next 5 years.
Catalonia’s recent ban on Airbnb-style holiday rentals breaches EU law, according to a complaint filed with the European Commission by an industry group.
The European Holiday Home Association claims that the ban, introduced by Catalonia in June this year, breaches the provision of services directive.
The Spanish region announced that they wanted to rid Barcelona of its 10,000 tourist flat licences over the next five years. The city has not granted new licences since 2014 but this has not helped to stem a housing crisis, with locals saying they can not find places to live at affordable prices.
Why has Barcelona’s Airbnb ban been challenged?
“We are convinced that EU law has not been respected,” Viktorija Molnar, Secretary General of the European Holiday Home Association (EHHA), said in a statement released on Wednesday.
“By submitting the EU complaint, we hope that the European Commission will take a step further and open a formal infringement procedure against Spain,” added Molnar, whose group represents short-term rental platforms like Airbnb and Expedia’s Vrbo.
The move follows legal concerns raised by the European Commission itself that restrictions brought in by the Spanish region were disproportionate to the aim of tackling housing shortages.
EHHA argues that “unjustified, disproportionate and unsuitable” restrictions breach the EU’s Services Directive, which regulates a swathe of activities from hotels to legal advice. They also said that claims about the impact of Airbnb on housing affordability are “politically inflamed”.
The lobby group may have support from the European Commission itself, whose officials wrote to Spanish authorities to protest the law in February according to a document seen by Euronews Travel.
“The Commission services consider that the restrictions laid down in [Catalonia’s] Decree-law 3/2023 are not suitable to attain the objective of fighting housing shortage and are disproportionate to that objective,” the document said.
Spanish authorities could have also considered less swingeing restrictions and hadn’t offered evidence that short-term rentals were responsible for housing market tensions, it added – noting that there were three times as many empty dwellings as tourist rental properties in Catalonia.
Barcelona is just one European holiday destinations trying to find ways to tackle overtourism.
Cities like Venice have banned cruise ships from stopping on their shores, Athens regularly restricts visitor numbers at the famous Acropolis and Amsterdam is moving its red light district out of the city centre to try and clean up its image.
How the European Commission is taking on holiday rentals
Brussels has already taken action to bring the sharing economy within the regulatory fold, offering new rights to platform workers and hiking value-added tax on short-term lets and ridesharing apps such as Uber.
But the issue could prove totemic for Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – who has created the first-ever European Commissioner for Housing as part of her second mandate, set to take office within weeks.
She has told Denmark’s Dan Jørgensen to “tackle systemic issues with short-term accommodation rentals”, in a mission letter that handed him the housing brief alongside responsibility for energy policy.
A spokesperson for the Catalan government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
CORRECTION(20 November, 10:02): corrects spelling of Molnar’s name
Travel
Microsoft pitches AI agents that can perform tasks on their own at annual Ignite event
The move has been criticised by other tech companies who have branded Microsoft as being a “panic mode”.
In opening remarks to a company conference in the United States on Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has set the stage for where the company is taking its artificial intelligence (AI) business.
AI developers are increasingly pitching the next wave of generative AI (GenAI) chatbots as AI “agents” that can do more useful things on people’s behalf.
But the cost of building and running AI tools is so high that more investors are questioning whether the technology’s promise is overblown.
Microsoft said last month that it’s preparing for a world where “every organisation will have a constellation of agents – ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous”.
Microsoft elaborated in a blog post Tuesday that such autonomous agents “can operate around the clock to review and approve customer returns or go over shipping invoices to help businesses avoid costly supply-chain errors”.
Microsoft’s annual Ignite conference caters to its big business customers.
Microsoft criticised
The pivot toward so-called “agentic AI” comes as some users are seeing limits to the large language models behind chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s own Copilot.
Those systems work by predicting the most plausible next word in a sentence and are good at certain writing-based work tasks.
But tech companies have been working to build AI tools that are better at longer-range planning and reasoning so they can access the web or control computers and perform tasks on their own on a user’s behalf.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has criticized Microsoft’s pivot. Salesforce also has its “Agentforce” service that uses AI in sales, marketing, and other tasks.
“Microsoft rebranding Copilot as ‘agents’? That’s panic mode,” Benioff said in a social media post last month. He went on to claim that Microsoft’s flagship AI assistant, called Copilot, is “a flop” that is inaccurate and spills corporate data.
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