Fancy a weekend in Kosovo? No-frills airlines look for new holiday hotspots

Luanda has supplanted Leeds, Port Harcourt is the new Chicago, and 2003 could be the year of the Balkans for British travellers. As airlines struggle to make money on traditional routes, the aviation chart of the world is changing, with new services to destinations far from tourism hotspots.

Yesterday British Airways announced details of its network overhaul for the summer. Cardiff drops out of the schedules at the end of this month, and the airline abandons Leeds/ Bradford in March. Instead, BA is expanding into eastern Europe, with a flight from Gatwick to Krakow in Poland. The airline is also adding an extra weekly flight from Gatwick to the Kosovan capital, Pristina, and giving Belgrade services a higher profile by moving them to Heathrow.

Sarajevo gets its first non-stop link from Britain next month. Air Bosnia is to start flying from Gatwick to the Bosnian capital on 3 February. Sasha Ilic, the airline's director for UK and Ireland, says the flights are likely to be filled mainly by passengers from "international agencies, UN staff and the news media", and refugees who settled in the UK returning to see their homelands. The airline is aiming at British tourists with a fare of £138 return, and is promoting skiing holidays at the venue of the 1980 Winter Olympics, at an all-inclusive price of £430 a week.

Tourist bookings are thin on the ground for two new African services from London. Angola's capital joined the BA network last month, and next month Virgin Atlantic starts flying from Gatwick to Port Harcourt, Nigeria's "oil capital".

This is Virgin's first new route since 11 September 2001. After the attacks on America, the airline abandoned its links to Chicago and Toronto. Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Atlantic, said: "We are going into places which we think will be more immediately profitable." The airline has timed departures to connect with inbound flights from Houston, to pick up oil executives heading for West Africa. These new long-haul routes are aimed squarely at business traffic, but the expansion of leisure destinations is expected to continue at similar levels to last year.

In 2002, new services were added at a rate of two a week. The no-frills Irish airline Ryanair has long specialised in flying from Stansted to places for which there is no apparent market, such as Friedrichs-hafen on Lake Constance. "We have loads of others up our sleeves," Michael O'Leary, Ryanair's chief executive, said.

Other no-frills airlines plan dozens of new routes for 2003, including the oddest of the year: from Bournemouth to the small French town of Bergerac. This connection is selling so well that yesterday Buzz increased the services from five times a week to daily. The Dutch-owned airline also revealed a new link from the Dorset resort to La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast of France.

TV shows inspire 'frontier' tourists

Television travel shows such as Michael Palin's Sahara are fuelling a boom in extended holidays to inhospitable places.

The number of people forgoing the pleasures of the pool to trek across deserts, mountains or jungles has doubled in two years and quadrupled over the past decade. Travellers say they have been inspired by shows such as Palin's BBC programme on the Sahara and Ray Mears' Extreme Survival series.

The trend is most pronounced among the middle-aged, with 54 per cent aged from 35 to 54.

Martin Anslow, organiser of the Adventure Travel and Sports Show in London this weekend, said research showed 65 per cent of travellers taking "frontier" breaks were encouraged by television shows. "A growing number of people are happy to spend their hard-earned cash on a tough time... It seems that, for many, endurance is the new relaxation," he said.

Travellers would pay up to £2,500 for holidays that often left them without a bed, electricity, running water or lavatories.

Paul Goldstein, from the biggest adventure tour operator, Exodus, said: "There are few frontiers any more. Most of them have been found, but the big thing is that people are turning away from mainstream holidays and all-inclusive hotels." Customers in Mali, Borneo, Tibet or Mongolia were as likely to be City bankers on a career break as Australian backpackers.

Chris Gray