A holiday home on Bornholm: a guide to the island's areas, seasons and prices
14 August 2026
Bornholm is small enough that you can drive right around the island in a morning, and big enough that four families can holiday there the same week without agreeing on a single thing. Some want cliffs, herring beer and ceramics workshops. Others want a beach of white sand with a bottom that stays shallow forever. Choosing the right area therefore matters more on Bornholm than at most other Danish holiday destinations, because the island changes character within a few kilometres.
This guide walks through how the island fits together, which areas suit which kind of holiday, how to get there, when it pays to travel, and what the week actually costs once every fee is counted.
How the island fits together
Bornholm is around 588 square kilometres and about 39,000 people live there permanently. From Rønne in the west to Svaneke in the east is under 40 kilometres by road, so wherever you stay, you can reach most of the island in under an hour. That means you do not have to choose an area based on what you want to see. You choose it based on how you want to wake up.
Broadly, the north and east are cliff coast with small harbours, granite and steep slopes. The south is sand coast with dunes and shallow beaches. The west is mixed, with Rønne as the island’s town and a coast facing the sunset. In the middle lies Almindingen, one of Denmark’s largest forests, along with farmland, small roads, round churches and smokehouses on the way to the coast.
The areas, and who they suit
Rønne and the south west coast
Rønne is the arrival town, and for many it therefore becomes a place you simply drive through. That is a mistake. It has the best grocery coverage on the island, a few good restaurants and an old town centre with cobbled streets. A holiday home or apartment here makes sense if you are travelling without a car, if you are coming for a couple of days, or if you want to be able to go out in the evening without driving afterwards. The coast south of Rønne towards Arnager has long sandy beaches that are far less visited than Dueodde.
Allinge, Sandvig and the northern tip
The northern tip is the most dramatic part of the island. The cliffs drop straight into the water, Hammershus sits on its knuckle of granite looking out over the Baltic, and Hammeren has walking trails unlike anything else in Denmark. Allinge and Sandvig are small, welcoming towns where you swim from rock pools rather than sandy beaches. Choose the north if you want to hike, climb, swim off the rocks and have a view from the property. Do not choose it if you have small children who need to run straight into shallow water.
Gudhjem and Svaneke on the east coast
The east coast is what people have on the postcard. Gudhjem climbs the cliff in yellow houses with black roofs, and boats leave from here for Christiansø, about 18 kilometres offshore and a small world of its own with fortifications and almost no cars. Svaneke further south is one of Denmark’s best preserved market towns, with a brewery, a glassworks and a harbour that still works. Holiday homes here tend to be older and characterful rather than large and new. If you are two or four adults who want short drives and good food nearby, the east coast is hard to beat.
Dueodde and the southern tip
Dueodde has the finest sand in Denmark, almost like powder, and a beach set behind dunes and pine trees. The water stays shallow a long way out, which is the whole explanation for why families with children keep coming back. On the other hand, there is not much of a town. If you stay in the south, expect to drive for restaurants and shopping, and let the ability to cook at home weigh into your choice of property.
Åkirkeby and the interior
The interior is systematically underrated. Properties here are often cheaper than on the coast, and from the middle of the island nothing is more than about twenty minutes away. Åkirkeby has shops and the island’s largest church, Almindingen lies just to the north with Ekkodalen and Rytterknægten, and the four round churches, Østerlars, Nylars, Nyker and Olsker, are scattered across the landscape. If you want the most square metres and garden for the money, look here.
How to get to Bornholm
Bornholm lies closer to Sweden and Germany than to the rest of Denmark, and that shapes the journey. There are three realistic ways across.
| Route | Approximate travel time | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Ferry Ystad to Rønne | Around 1 hour 20 minutes on the fast ferry | Most travellers, with or without a car, combined with train or driving through Sweden |
| Ferry Køge to Rønne | Around 5 to 6 hours, often an overnight crossing | Anyone who wants to avoid driving through Sweden and would rather sleep on the way |
| Flight Copenhagen to Bornholm Airport | Around 35 minutes in the air | Short stays without a car, or weekends where travel time costs the most |
Driving from Copenhagen to Ystad takes about two hours, and there are also buses and trains timed with the ferry. Timetables, prices and which routes run in low and high season change from year to year, so always check the operator’s current schedule before you book a property with a fixed arrival day. If you are bringing a car in July, reserve the ferry space early, ideally at the same time as the property.
When in the year to go
July is the short, warm and expensive week. The beaches at Dueodde fill up, restaurants in Svaneke stop taking walk ins, and holiday home prices peak. If you want the island with a little more air around you, the second half of June and the first half of August are often the best compromise between weather and price.
September is Bornholm’s underrated month. The water is still warm from the summer, the cliff paths are dry, and the light over the Baltic is low and sharp. Autumn and winter are something else entirely. Then the holiday is about walks, smokehouses with rye bread and herring, and a property with a wood burning stove. Some homes close outside the season, so the selection is smaller, but so are the prices.
Easter and the autumn half term sit somewhere in between. They book early, because families plan them around the school holidays, so if you want a particular property in late October you usually need to be early.
What the week really costs, and where the money goes
The rent itself is only half the calculation. The other half is transport and fees.
A typical example: a holiday home at 8,000 DKK for a week. On top of that, the large booking platforms add a guest fee of typically 14 to 16 percent, so roughly 1,120 to 1,280 DKK, and a cleaning fee is often added as well. Then add the ferry both ways. That puts you around 11,000 DKK before you have bought a single herring on the harbour.
The fee is the only one of those three numbers you can remove entirely. On flymhd.com you pay 0 DKK in guest fees. The price you see is the price the host set, and payment goes directly to the host via Stripe, where the amount is reserved and only charged once the booking is confirmed. There is no middleman adding a percentage to your bill. Read more about how it works under how it works, or see the walkthrough of why these fees exist at all in the post on renting a holiday home without a service fee.
A checklist before you book a holiday home on Bornholm
Run through these points before you hit book. They catch most of the regrets.
- Is the distance to the nearest grocery shop acceptable if you are staying in the south or the interior?
- Is the beach by the property sand or rock, and does that suit whoever is going to swim?
- Is there a wood burning stove or proper heating if you are travelling outside the summer?
- Does the check in time match the ferry arrival, or will you spend three hours with the luggage in the car?
- Is cleaning included, or do you have to clean yourself on departure?
- Is there room to cook for everyone if you are a large group?
- Is the price the final price, or will fees appear at payment?
Book directly and keep the fee yourself
Bornholm rewards anyone who chooses their area deliberately. Cliffs in the north, sand in the south, market towns in the east, and the most house for your money in the middle. Once you have found the area that fits the holiday you want, the rest is about getting the property at the right price.
FlyMHD is a platform with no commission for hosts and no fee for guests, and we are opening for bookings in Denmark as our first market. Sign up on the front page and you will hear from us when properties on Bornholm and across the country go live, so you can book without fees from day one.