Kotor Was Never Trying to Be Dubrovnik

Kotor Was Never Trying to Be Dubrovnik

The dupe economy sells one coast as a cheaper version of another, but the honest ledger is about what you gain, what you give up, and how little time the trade has left.

Elias Andreadis

An aerial view of the Bay of Kotor with the town's red roofs, the fjord, and a cruise ship at anchor, no identifiable people, for the piece on Kotor and the destination-dupe economy

Photo olga brajnovic / Unsplash

Kotor was never trying to be a cheaper Dubrovnik. It was walled by Venice and answered to Vienna, never to Dubrovnik 90 kilometers up the coast, yet many will arrive this summer grading it against a town it never resembled. The dupe is a shopping term Expedia ported to travel in late 2023; one in three travelers has booked one since. The saving is real and smaller than the pitch: about 83 euros a night against Dubrovnik's 103, a fifth off. You are not buying a cheaper room so much as space, and an earlier phase of a place. But the frame has a clock: Albania, where Ksamil undercuts Mykonos by more than half, is already rationing water to the coast, and Santorini caps cruise arrivals at 8,000 a day. You are not beating the crowd, only arriving a few seasons ahead of it. Go, but go for Kotor.