Bečići and Rafailovići, the Budva Riviera's long beach

Bečići is what plenty of people picture when they think of a beach holiday in Montenegro. A long sandy beach, big hotels on the front and a town with an old quarter on the other side of a headland. It hasn’t got Pržno’s charm or Sveti Stefan’s postcard, but it’s the most practical base on the whole riviera.

A beach with a prize

The Budva tourist board says Bečići beach won the Grand Prix in Paris in 1935 as Europe’s most beautiful, and thirty years later a Golden Palm as the Mediterranean’s finest. It measures about 2,000 metres and nearly 99,000 m², with multicoloured sand that, according to the same source, four streams carry down from the mountain. It runs from Zavala headland to Đevištinje, is shared between hotel lidos and free public stretches, and the same source rates its water among the cleanest on the coast. At the entrance to Rafailovići there’s a rock they call green or blue. I compare it with the rest in beaches in Budva.

Bečići and Rafailovići

They’re two villages joined together and sharing a beach. In the preliminary 2023 census, Bečići had 960 residents and Rafailovići 765. Above the beach, among pines and cypresses, stands the church of St Thomas, which some sources trace to the fourteenth century; the present building went up in 1910 and is dedicated to St Stefan Štiljanović, the last prince of Paštrovići, who was born nearby. It holds his relics, brought from Belgrade in 2007, and draws the faithful every year on 17 and 19 October. You can reach it straight from the sand.

To sleep close to everything, search places to stay in Bečići on Expedia and filter by area before price.

What there is to do

Beach, mainly, and the national tourist board includes Bečići on its list of family beaches for the Budva Riviera. The tourist board lists water sports firms at the Splendid hotel and in Bečići, offering parasailing, flyboarding and even a tourist submarine. From here you’ll see paragliders coming down after launching at Brajići, 731 metres up, and landing on this very beach, something I describe in paragliding in Montenegro. And from 28 to 30 August 2026 the beach hosted Sea Dance, free with advance registration.

Hotels

Bečići has some of the biggest hotels on the coast. The Budva tourist board rates the Splendid five-star and lists the Mediteran and the Iberostar Bellevue, now branded Iberostar Waves Bellevue, which claims 40,000 m² of gardens on its website. Next door, the Eurostars Queen of Montenegro has 236 rooms, and the Montenegro Beach Resort, run by the Splendid’s owners, opens only from April to October. My breakdown by area is in hotels in Budva.

If you are short on time, see the best tours in Bečići and pick one that fits your day.

Getting around

The town bus between Budva and Sveti Stefan calls at Bečići and Rafailovići roughly every ten minutes by day and less often at night, until 01:30. Better still is the seafront path, which takes you through the Zavala tunnel to Slovenska beach and the old town, and the other way to Kamenovo and Pržno.

To sleep close to everything, search places to stay in Bečići on Booking.com and filter by area before price.