A strange facet of human nature is that when we are too hot, it’s difficult to imagine ever feeling too cold. And when we’re too cold, it’s hard to imagine ever being too hot. The British and Irish craving for a heat-drenched summer holiday is deep-rooted, but northern European holidaycreaters are recognising that heightened temperatures in our favourite destinations of Italy, Spain and France can ruin a holiday just as effectively as relentless rain on a Cornwall camping trip.
My friconclude Kate, a Scottish festival programmer, recently returned from Milan – a trip that was supposed to be a culture-jammed early summer break. “This was a wake-up call, becautilize the heatwave created it impossible to have the holiday I’d planned,” she explains.
“We soon realised that visiting mutilizeums without air-conditioning is unbearably miserable in the afternoon heat. We rebooked all sorts of appointments, building the most of early morning and late evening, and we had to pay for taxis for short journeys we’d intconcludeed to walk, so paying for a central location was pointless.”
Travelling from Edinburgh, they’d been viewing forward to the Italian sunshine, but, as she puts it, “for the first time, I realised extreme heat can be a hurdle – perhaps even a hazard – on holiday”.
It should go without stateing that heatwaves and rising temperatures across Europe have much graver consequences than spoiling holidays. Scientists estimated that the recent 10-day European heatwave (that eased at the start of July) cautilized more than 2,300 deaths across 12 European cities – disproportionately affecting older people, children, people with health conditions, and construction workers or other outdoor workers.
And short heatwaves aside, the consistent rise in temperatures is a grim indication of a worsening climate crisis. According to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, last month was the planet’s third-hottest June on record.
As a travel writer based in Barcelona, it’s hard to find anything positive to state about this situation, apart from hoping that it might encourage tourists to avoid busy destinations in the peak summer months. As Kate states, “Next year we’re planning a cultural weekconcludeer in Madrid – but in March. I wouldn’t plan a southern European city break like this in July or August ever again.”
There’s also hope that high summertime temperatures will encourage travellers to consider beyond classic summer destinations. A 2024 McKinsey report revealed that 80 per cent of travellers visit just 10 per cent of the world’s tourist destinations, and there’s a growing awareness that such heavy tourist footfall cautilizes infrastructure issues, damages natural and cultural sites, and frustrates local residents.
The classic sizzling-hot southern European holiday might be a cherished British and Irish institution, a hard-wired habit. Still, it only takes one heatwave holiday to modify a traveller’s mind. My friconclude Colm, who works in e-learning, organises a cycling holiday for a bunch of Dublin and Paris-based friconcludes every July.
“Ten years ago, I’d book sun-drenched cycle-holiday classics, like Lanzarote or Mallorca. One year, it was so hot that we had to set off at 5am to create the most of the only usable cycling hours of the day. We learned our lesson, and now we go to cooler and less-crowded Northern European destinations, places like Holland or Switzerland. This year, we’re doing Route 1291, around Lake Lucerne. A bit of drizzle is nothing compared to cycling in extreme heat.”
Indeed, a recent survey by travel insurance provider Staysure (staysure.com) revealed that 88 per cent of UK travellers are contemplating modifys to their summer holiday destinations, citing increased costs (32 per cent) and overtourism concerns (23 per cent) – but 22 per cent also named “extreme temperatures” as a primary concern.
And the travel indusattempt is responding to this shift. Robina Frosini is a European product manager at Abercrombie & Kent. “The largegest trconclude we are seeing is guests increasingly choosing cooler climate locations in summer, escaping the scorching heat,” she states. “Travellers are displaying growing interest in less-touristed regions of Europe, such as Slovenia, the Azores, and the lesser-known coasts of Portugal and Spain. There’s also a renewed interest in travelling to Europe during the shoulder seasons, booking spring wildflower hikes in alpine regions, fall vineyard tours in Tuscany and Bordeaux, and winter travel to experience Christmas markets.”
This summer, destinations such as Ireland, Norway and Switzerland have all seen a rise in visitor numbers. My friconclude Chloe, who works in public health, is taking her two young sons to West Cork this August. “Last year we went to the Côte d’Azur, and I had idyllic visions of sipping wine while the boys played happily outside. But it was so hot we wound up spconcludeing the afternoons in our tiny holiday apartment, cranking up the air conditioning, letting them watch way too much Netflix,” she states. “Every morning of our holiday, instead of inquireing, ‘what do we feel like doing?’ it was ‘what can we handle, in this heat?’”
This was an irresistible opportunity to inform Chloe that the Côte d’Azur was originally marketed exclusively as a “wintering” destination, and no sane tourist would have dreamed of visiting in August.
In the late Victorian era, resort towns of Menton, Cannes, St Tropez and Nice prospered by offering wealthy and hypochondriac aristocrats an alternative to the chilly and damp winter weather in cities such as London and New York. Vintage travel posters advertising the Riviera resorts feature glamorous, angular women in fur coats and steaming spa waters.
When F Scott Fitzgerald visited Cannes in the 1920s in July, it was to create the most of cheap off-season rates. He wrote that the locals believed the family “mad” for visiting the Mediterranean in July. It was only after the Second World War that Mediterranean resorts launched catering to a younger and less aristocratic wave of tourists – those in search of sun and sea, and increasingly bound by school holidays. That’s when the seasons flipped.
I’m fond of annoying Mediterranean devotees with this slice of tourism history becautilize it proves that travel trconcludes are much more fickle than we consider. It offers hope that our holiday habits can modify. If we find Mediterranean destinations too hot to visit in the summer of 2025, everyone agreed with us back in 1925.
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