It may be impossible to find a traveler who loves crowds and long lines. However, it is part of the price most tourists have to pay to visit some of the world’s most famous attractions, especially during high season.
In the past, those looking for a bargain could count on traveling in the off-peak or off-season – e.g. Italy used to be more affordable in autumn, while Hong Kong was cheaper during the hot summer months.
But the pandemic has thrown away much of this conventional travel data.
Some companies maintained their remote work policies even after the pandemic ended, giving their employees more opportunities to explore the world.
All this tourism, however, has consequences.
Almost every day there are new headlines about efforts to combat hypertourism, such as new hotel bans in Amsterdam, barricades preventing photography in Japan and mass protests in the Canary Islands. According to the United Nations, global travel traffic will return to pre-pandemic levels by 2024 – and could increase further.
“There are still some peak seasons, and those peak seasons are still very busy, but the low seasons are also becoming increasingly crowded,” explains Olivier Ponti, director of ForwardKeys, a Spanish travel data and analytics company.
“In Thailand, the low season generally runs from April to September, with April and May being very hot,” says Ponti. “During this low season, the volume of tourists per month is more than 7% of the annual total. That means very, very little seasonality.”
The impact of climate change
Probably the biggest factor affecting what we know as “peak period” travel is the weather.
“Many people tend to assume that low season is defined as the time of year when the weather is at its worst,” says Ged Brown, owner of the aptly named Low Season Traveler.
But climate change is redefining what “bad” weather can be.
A 2023 survey by the European Travel Commission reported that European travelers cited weather as the number one factor in deciding where to go on vacation, with 8% of respondents saying they were concerned about extreme weather in European destinations.
Heatwaves in southern European countries such as Italy, Spain and Greece caused a crisis last summer, with the trend only continuing to increase. Many foreign tourists have gone missing or died amid the extreme heat in Greece so far this season.
More than 62,000 people died from the heat in Europe in 2022, the hottest summer ever recorded on the continent. Following these incidents, ForwardKeys data shows an immediate increase in summer flight searches to Northern European destinations such as Denmark and Sweden.
Source: CNN