How heatwaves and soaring temperatures are changing tourism across Europe

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 holidaymakers 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 friend 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, because the heatwave made it impossible to have the holiday I’d planned,” she explains.

“We soon realised that visiting museums without air-conditioning is unbearably miserable in the afternoon heat. We rebooked all sorts of appointments, making the most of early morning and late evening, and we had to pay for taxis for short journeys we’d intended to walk, so paying for a central location was pointless.”

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Travelling from Edinburgh, they’d been looking 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 saying 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) caused 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 say about this situation, apart from hoping that it might encourage tourists to avoid busy destinations in the peak summer months. As Kate says, “Next year we’re planning a cultural weekender 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 think 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 causes 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 change a traveller’s mind. My friend Colm, who works in e-learning, organises a cycling holiday for a bunch of Dublin and Paris-based friends every July.

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“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 make 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 changes 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 industry is responding to this shift. Robina Frosini is a European product manager at Abercrombie & Kent. “The biggest trend we are seeing is guests increasingly choosing cooler climate locations in summer, escaping the scorching heat,” she says. “Travellers are showing 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.”

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This summer, destinations such as Ireland, Norway and Switzerland have all seen a rise in visitor numbers. My friend 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 spending the afternoons in our tiny holiday apartment, cranking up the air conditioning, letting them watch way too much Netflix,” she says. “Every morning of our holiday, instead of asking, ‘what do we feel like doing?’ it was ‘what can we handle, in this heat?’”

This was an irresistible opportunity to tell 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.

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When F Scott Fitzgerald visited Cannes in the 1920s in July, it was to make the most of cheap off-season rates. He wrote that the locals thought the family “mad” for visiting the Mediterranean in July. It was only after the Second World War that Mediterranean resorts began 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 because it proves that travel trends are much more fickle than we think. It offers hope that our holiday habits can change. If we find Mediterranean destinations too hot to visit in the summer of 2025, everyone agreed with us back in 1925.