One of Venice's Best Rooftops Returns as a Breezy Greek Hangout With Unbeatable Views
The prime rooftop of Venice's Hotel Erwin has been remolded into Kassi Venice Beach, opening on Friday, July 4, with a tight menu of Greek-inflected mezze, grilled skewers, and salads, plus a view of the Pacific Ocean. Coming from the Wish You Were Here group, which operates Elephante in Santa Monica and Belles Beach House in Venice, Kassi first opened in West Third Street back in 2019 before closing and resurfacing in Las Vegas's Virgin Hotels. There, it morphed into more of a party-like Italian American restaurant that befits Vegas. But the menu will return to its original Greek and Eastern Mediterranean flavors in Venice, operating from lunch to fairly late.
On the rooftop, umbrellas encircle an elevated patch of clipped greenery, with lounge seating and dinner tables accommodating 185 diners at a time. Swaying palm trees and the shoreline offer a real island vibe as skateboarders, cyclists, and performing dancers thrive on the concrete expanse just a few blocks away on the Venice Boardwalk. Takes on Greek classics like a spanakopita quesadilla, fried zucchini chips, crispy saganaki with Fresno chile jam, and a cucumber-tomato-feta salad comprise the starters; familiar mezzes like hummus and tzatziki come with za'atar-sprinkled flat bread. Five-ounce portions of skewers feature lamb meatballs with pomegranate molasses, beef tenderloin in red chermoula, and harissa honey chicken. The food options are limited enough that decision fatigue shouldn't settle in.
Kassi is as much about the drinks as it is panoramic views. Shaken sippers like the Oracle of Delphi mix tequila with watermelon, mazzura, and cucumber, while draft cocktails like honeydew thyme paloma should help the bartenders churn out boozy drinks. White and red wines lean toward Greek origins, while Bondi Brewing Co. lager hints at Mathers' and Lim's upbringings in Australia. Wish You Were Here, founded by Nick Mathers and helmed by chef Thomas Lim, seems to do these breezy spaces well, given the success of Belles and Elephante, the latter of which has expanded into other states like Arizona. Kassi should fit seamlessly into the Venice restaurant milieu, a relaxed, easygoing Greek restaurant with stunning vistas for days.
Kassi Venice Beach is open Sunday to Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and until 12 a.m. Thursday to Saturday; it's located at 1697 Pacific Avenue, Venice, CA, 90291, with reservations on OpenTable . Tickets to the opening July 4 party, also available on OpenTable, cost $40 each. See More:
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USA Today
3 hours ago
- USA Today
Fire destroys North Rim Lodge, but not its singular place in the Grand Canyon's story
Perched at the edge of Grand Canyon's Bright Angel Peninsula, the North Rim Lodge was so perfectly situated and well-constructed that it seemed to emerge out of the sandstone itself, like just another geologic feature. Others compared it to a Greek monastery built on a pinnacle, or a medieval fortress impervious to sacking. The aura of permanence and natural rightness held by the North Rim Lodge helped obscure the fact that it was only as old as 1937, a bare blip on a planetary timescale, and also that it was never immune from the forces of the environment that surrounded it. On July 12, a wildfire sparked by lightning tore through it and burned it to the Kaibab limestone foundations, along with approximately 70 of the nearby tourist cabins and other structures. Few doubt that the North Rim Lodge will be rebuilt. The spot it occupied is too topographically eloquent to surrender for touristic use, plus most of the toughest permitting is already in place. The question is how much the new creation will resemble what was lost. The lodge was never the point of coming to the Grand Canyon — the real purpose lay out beyond it — but as the modest aperture to the human camera, it had a special grace and a dignified beauty of its own. 'The lodge was designed so that you're funneled into it, then and out of it onto the back patio, directing you into a singular view,' said Stephen Pyne, an emeritus professor at Arizona State University and the author of the intellectual history 'How the Canyon Became Grand.' 'It was a portal into the Canyon. It distilled everything.' Moreover, it held an expert sense of suspense. Unlike a mountain that can be seen from miles away, the Grand Canyon reveals itself in a shocking visual thunderclap, all at once. For those arriving down the long road across the North Kaibab Plateau, the front of the lodge functioned like a curtain, delaying the scenic climax until after the visitor had walked through the front door and through the lobby toward the Sun Room and the veranda beyond where the full explosion of color and depth awaited. The architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood designed the lodge on a contract for the Union Pacific Railroad, which was then seeking to lure wealthy tourists into national parks with the promise of big roaring fireplaces and chilled gin martinis instead of bugs, heat and canvas tents. A first lodge built in 1927 with an observation tower and a second-story sleeping hall had been partially destroyed in a Sept. 1, 1932, fire "started by flying sparks in the kitchen as the chef was preparing breakfast," according to a wire service account. The flames that consumed the dining room and two cabins made an impressive pyre that could be clearly seen from the South Rim, 13 miles across the gorge. Nobody was hurt. The first head of the National Park Service, Stephen Mather, made it clear he wanted an inviting building to replace the old structure. A former reporter for the New York Sun, and an advertising man who came up with the first slogans for the detergent called 20 Mule Team Borax, Mather was prone to fits of depression that he helped soothe by trips out into the woods. He believed that easy access to the nation's treasures was a key to civic betterment, and when Theodore Roosevelt named him head of the new parks agency, he took tasteful and limited development for the people to be a mission on behalf of democracy. Mather helped rid the Grand Canyon of tacky profiteers like Ralph Cameron who had gotten rich off rent-seeking tourist traps like Indian Gardens and the hiker's tollbooth erected at the top of Bright Angel Trail. In its place, he sought orderly accommodations run by established concessionaires. In those days, that meant the railroads. The South Rim became the exclusive province of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, with its famous chain of Harvey Houses. The North Rim went to the Union Pacific, which sought to link it in a round trip bus circle with other national parks at Zion and Bryce Canyon. The North Rim 'slows it all down' The novelist and polemicist Edward Abbey, who worked for a season in a North Rim fire tower just a few miles from the lodge, would later complain about 'windshield tourism' and the corporate blandification of America's treasures. But Mather's legacy of tidy clusters of campgrounds, general stores, lodges and ranger stations prevailed and determined the quotidian side of how national park visitors would experience grandeur: what they would eat, where they would sleep and what trinkets they would buy. Underwood's North Rim Lodge resembled the other hospitality structures he created for Zion and Bryce ― the intimate feeling of a cabin combined with the spaciousness of an art gallery. The centerpiece, called the Sun Room, featured three giant windows that offered a peerless view into the gorge and its colors of salmon, coral, saffron and blood orange. What made it particularly beguiling was the indirect angle of the Bright Angel Creek drainage, and the vast canvas of the buttes and spires below. The eye couldn't rest for long on any one spot. The picture changed by the minute as sun and clouds showered down new shapes and colors on the stone. National Park Service architect Albert H. Good had laid out the government's principle for rustic design in a 1935 manual called, prosaically enough, "Park Structures and Facilities." The key paragraph for Western lodges read: "Successfully handled, it is a style which, through the use of native materials in proper scale, and through the avoidance of rigid, straight lines, and over-sophistication, gives the feeling of having been executed by pioneer craftsmen with limited hand tools. It thus achieves sympathy with natural surroundings and with the past." The interior walls of the lodge and the oversized trusses emphasized darkened wood, as though the inside were a camera. That at least some of the wood was actually stained concrete and steel didn't seem to register for most visitors, whose attention was purposely guided outside. The understated quality of the design showed off the lodge's greatest virtue: It had the good sense to stand aside with the discretion of a palace valet. 'There was something about the antiquity of it,' said Craig Childs, author of 'Grand Canyon: Time Below the Rim.' 'A flow toward the windows and out the door onto the decks, looking down.' For the overwhelming majority of visitors to the North Rim, the back patio of the lodge was the Grand Canyon. Surveys indicated that less than 1% of them ventured onto a trail or left the small developed area. Pointing a camera down from the railings amidst the crowds was as close as most ever got. Among connoisseurs of the Canyon experience, the North Rim was always the preferred destination. It was a smaller and more rugged experience compared with the more urbanized and commercially packed South Rim, whose signature 1905 El Tovar Hotel had its own design pleasures, including a soaring lobby ceiling, but with a giant flaw: A guest had to cross a street in order to actually see the Canyon. Those who went to the North Rim instead, typically just 10% of annual visitors, could fancy themselves more adventuresome. You had to work harder to get there ― it is a three and a half hour drive from Phoenix to the South Rim as opposed to five and a half hours to the North Rim, which is also a much farther distance from any interstate, and down a 45-mile dead end road with limited and rustic facilities dangling like a worm on the end of a long fishhook, as opposed to the horizontal Las Vegas Strip line of lights on the South Rim, where you could take a passenger train right up to the walls of El Tovar and have a choice of restaurants and junk shops. 'The North Rim slows it all down,' Childs said. 'It's not a manic rush. The lodge was built to have you examine the Grand Canyon and take a pause. It was a kind of a cathedral where you were supposed to lower your voice. You were supposed to be diminished. There was a holiness to it that you could feel as you walked in.' And in the rivalry between rims, the North could make a better claim on cultural heritage. The relative ease of travel to the South Rim after World War II obscured the fact that the first American period of settlement and development was heavily weighted toward the north side. The explorer John Wesley Powell thought the views from there were superior. In 1873, he took the painter Thomas Moran up to the elevation now known as Powell Plateau, and Moran responded with a magnificent rendering called "Chasm of the Colorado," which Congress bought the following year for $10,000. Serenading the guests as they depart From a spot 17 miles west of Bright Angel Peninsula, the Yale-trained geologist Clarence Dutton spent a few weeks in the summer of 1875 surveying the geology below. Though not a particularly religious man, he chose holy names for the spires and buttes that seemed equal to the cosmic array of primal Earth-force the Canyon had opened up. Zoroaster, Shiva, Brahma, Solomon, Buddha: The names speak to gods, heavens and spirits. His grammatical choices swerved away from Powell, who preferred the local language of the Paiutes and Havasupai for the features he encountered, such as Toroweap Overlook, as well as gritty boatman's names for difficult spots on the Colorado like Whirlpool Canyon, Gates of Lodore and Hell's Half Mile. Some felt that Dutton was acting blasphemously or at least taking too much literary license, but others thought only a reach into the numinous could express the world-historical importance of the Canyon, which has no physical equal on the planet. Had the view from the North Rim been experienced by oil painters earlier than the late 19th century, Dutton thought, the entire history of art would have been different. He was also among the first to make a written description of the visual bogglement encountered by the millions of North Rim visitors who would come after him. 'As we contemplate these objects we find it quite impossible to realize their magnitude,' Dutton wrote. 'Not only are we deceived, but we are conscious that we are deceived, and yet we cannot conquer the deception.' Underwood's masterpiece on Bright Angel Peninsula replaced not just a burnt-down first attempt at a lodge but a deluxe campground called Wylie Way, established by the entrepreneur W.W. Wylie on a concession from the U.S. Forest Service. Groups of 25 visitors could rent a large fixed tent for $6 and have access to a central dining facility. The Union Pacific supplied him with a reliable stream of guests from April through October. Then as now, the facilities shut down in the winter. Among the guests in those first few years of Underwood's new lodge was the novelist Tom Wolfe, author of 'Look Homeward, Angel' and 'Of Time and the River.' He drank Scotch highballs on the back patio but, like most visitors, didn't venture down the trail. On the morning of June 25, 1938, he rose at 7:30, ate breakfast in the dining hall, and then was serenaded off on the Union Pacific tour bus by a team of waitresses in a ritual they enacted for every departing load of tourists, the sing away, usually including the World War I classic 'Till We Meet Again.' As Wolfe's bus moved north and away toward Utah, he gazed 'down through the forest, and the long sweeping upland meadows with deer and cattle grazing, and the aspen leaves in the bright air.' He had more to say in his diary about the lodge and the forest than he did the Canyon itself, for which he reserved a single phrase: 'and glamourous! ― and glamorous!' A setting for the Canyon's music and music about the Canyon For those who had to work harder to get to the North Rim Lodge, occasionally in a state of physical exhaustion, its abrupt materialization at the lip of the Canyon was like spotting a flag on the border of a friendly country. It was the termination point for those trail runners attempting a difficult 24 mile rim-to-rim journey in a single day from the south. And for hikers on the nearby Arizona Trail, the lodge and nearby general store were favorite resupply and resting spots. Those who developed the closest relationships with the lodge were those who worked there during the summers, especially the cooks and the wait staff. But the rangers and fire crews also treated it like a clubhouse. Pyne spent 15 seasons there as a firefighter, some of them living in an old cabin built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. 'The lodge was an important part of my time there,' he said. 'It was the main social gathering point. I can't tell you the number of nights we walked there. That's where we would see our girlfriends. Once a year, the crew would dress up and do a formal dinner.' His relationship with the North Rim went on for decades: He was married there, his oldest daughter spent two seasons working there and he would turn some his experiences into material for his book 'Fire: A Brief History.' Pyne recalled one night sitting on the back veranda with one of his colleagues, Ralph Becker, who would go on to a career as the mayor of Salt Lake City. They didn't say much to each other. 'I want to just listen to Canyon music,' Becker said. They could see lightning storms on the southern horizon near the San Francisco Peaks, making flashes that partially illuminated the abyss below, and the tops of Isis, Shiva and Brahma temples. 'It was a soothing place,' said Pyne, 'a great scene.' That same veranda became a venue for more literal instrumental music in later years when the Park Service invited a community ensemble called Symphony of the Canyons to perform outdoor pops concerts. The customary centerpiece was at least one movement from Ferde Grofe's 1931 'Grand Canyon Suite,' which the composer once described as 'notes in hieroglyphics that were later transcribed into musical notes.' On another occasion, he described waking up to his first view of the Canyon. 'I was spellbound by the silence; but then as it got lighter and brighter, you could hear the birds chirping and nature coming to life. All of a sudden, bingo! There was the sun. I could hardly describe it in words.' The Grand Canyon has never been adequately described in words or music notes. Not even the best paintings or photographs can ever trace its immensity; only fractions can be glimpsed and never held for long. The Canyon's real essence frustratingly out of reach, it instead functions as a metaphor for many things, depending on who is interpreting: time, death, God, depth, significance and insignificance. For many, it comes down to permanence. The rocks at Vishnu Basement are 2 billion years old. The walls of the Canyon are exactly the same as they were when first seen by the Archaic people of 9,000 years ago; the later Havasupai herders; the 1540 expedition of García López de Cárdenas y Figueroa; Powell's Corps of Discovery, and the new individual discoverers who arrive every day in cars and buses, and leave almost as fast. Surrounded by drying pines, lodge was destined to burn If the Canyon tells the story of permanence, the settlements on the rim are the soul of impermanence. Set amidst drying ponderosa pines, the North Rim Lodge was always destined to burn at some point; it was only a question of when the flames would arrive, and in what manner. The 2025 destruction was not the result of sparks from a grease fire in the kitchen, but the outgrowth of complicated politics of modern fire suppression policy. When a lightning bolt came down on July 4 and started a fire in a spot approximately five miles from the lodge, fire managers let it burn, a decision well in line with policies to contain such blazes and let them do the natural work of clearing several seasons worth of deadwood and undergrowth, reducing the chances for more destructive events in the future. But a week later, what had been named the Dragon Bravo Fire hit a patch of fuel and took on a terrifying character in new gusts of wind, surrounding overwhelmed firefighters on a helipad and heading with unstoppable force to the south. Within 24 hours, the lodge was gone. The only way to have preserved its life in advance preparation would have been to give a harsh defensive clearcut to the pines that surrounded it, taking away the sound of wind through the branches and stripping the lodge of one of its best elements: the illusion of organic emergence. Even as the flames were still licking at the fallen trusses, critics questioned whether Dragon Bravo should have been extinguished immediately out of extreme caution. Yet such blanket decisions to smother everything have historically made future fire seasons even worse. It is conceivable that the load of deadwood stacking on the plateau might have stoked a firestorm in five or 10 years that would have killed people in the lodge before there was time to evacuate. An irony of Dragon Bravo, said Pyne, is that it was itself contained by the burn scar of a previous fire that stole its possible fuel. The Outlet Fire in 2000, a prescribed burn that ran out of control, left a wall of aspen to the east that proved a partial barrier to the current fire. But it could not save the small island of development at the end of the plateau. The epitaph for the version of the North Rim Lodge that stood from 1936 to 2025 might well be that humanity will never master the awesome nature that lies outside the picture windows. We can frame it, package it, sell it, and make it as pleasant as possible. But we can never truly have it under our control, or perhaps even fully understand its depths. 'Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it,' said President Theodore Roosevelt when he made the case in 1903 for preserving the Grand Canyon as a national monument. 'The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.' The ever-changing portraits on display in the Sun Room communicated this idea without any words of translation. Among the Grand Canyon's other guiding metaphors is regeneration. Fires have swept through the ponderosas on the rim for as long as the trees have grown; they will keep growing back, fed by new nitrogen in the ash. The river 6,000 feet beneath the rim will keep carrying Rocky Mountain snows to the ocean just as it has for 5 million years. The Canyon itself remains completely untouched by any flickering temporality on its edges, as feeble as a firefly against Alpha Centauri. Touristic capitalism, too, will reassert itself on the North Rim, even in an era of federal budget slashing. Its return is as certain as the regrowth of aspens. A third version of the lodge will come up on Bright Angel Peninsula before the decade is over, ideally one as understated and timeless-looking as the one just vanished, and with an equal respect for the grandeur it was designed to showcase. Tom Zoellner, a former Republic reporter, is the author of 'Rim to River: Looking Into the Heart of Arizona.' Remembered: Arizona Republic readers share memories of Grand Canyon's North Rim
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Boston Globe
Warm and wonderful, Kaia celebrates modern Greek cuisine
Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up Crudo dishes are a highlight at Kaia, where a dish called Gifts of the Sea features an oyster, a crab claw, and a daily crudo. Erin Clark/Globe Staff Advertisement But among them, Kaia stands out as the total package. The food here levels up, delicious, lovely to look at, and stimulating for both appetite and mind. It expands upon Greek cuisine, cleverly playing with tradition, updating it, but also keeping it pristine when the moment for that is right. Executive chef Felipe Gonçalves previously worked at Menton, and it shows. The finesse of fine dining is on the plate, as well as fun, creativity, risk, and respect. Advertisement An illustration in one dish: spanakopita, which Xenia culinary director Brendan Pelley has been serving in some form since launching Greek pop-up Pelekasis a decade ago. He grew up eating the dish at family dinners. It was on his menu when he was chef de cuisine at Michael Schlow's Kaia takes the homey spinach and phyllo pie and turns it on its side, literally. It arrives a golden-brown rectangle, striations of green and yellow visible at the ends, all dressed up for a fancy dinner on top. It's strewn with snipped herbs and pretty edible blossoms. The dish wraps eggs, leeks, and preserved black truffle into the mix. A bite is a journey, from crisp, shattering layers of dough to billowy, warm interior, almost like a quiche. It's comfort food and eye candy at the same time. Octopus with staka glaze and avocado pistou. The menu changes regularly. Erin Clark/Globe Staff I think of the spanakopita as the heart of a meal here, the anchor that supports a rotating cast of crudo, meze, and whole fish dishes. It is the only given. After that, it's time to play. There are snacks. Zucchini chips, slices in a crisp and puffy batter, are drizzled with garos (a fish sauce) caramel. Those dolmades, the foie gras-filled grape leaves with their anchovy saddles, are as close as Kaia gets to surf and turf. And they are as close to tradition as the spanakopita is. Have them with caviar, if you like. Raw dishes rotate frequently. 'Gifts of the sea' features three presentations: a daily crudo, a crab claw with petimezi (grape syrup) aioli, and an oyster with charred cucumber toursi (pickle), tapioca, and dill. (Shoutout to the dining companion who arrived with a glossary of Greek food terms he had created and printed out.) These bites are lovely but so small they leave one wanting more; the larger crudo dishes are more satisfying, from langoustine with fermented honeydew, coriander oil, stone fruit, and puffed rice to tuna with heirloom tomatoes and berries. These dishes are of-the-season, and if you miss one iteration, well, there's the next one to look forward to. Advertisement Hilopites, a Greek pasta, served with lobster. Erin Clark/Globe Staff Meze, too, change and change again. Change is good (even if I still miss the velvety sea urchin terrine, which reminded me of Japanese ankimo, monkfish liver, in its preparation). Grilled octopus was glazed in staka (Greek butter), sprinkled with savory, crunchy bits like an everything bagel, and served with avocado pistou; it was impossibly tender. Now it comes with artichokes, fava beans, and dill. Hilopites, wide, ribbony noodles, came with brown butter-poached lobster and a lobster-infused sauce spiked with Greek brandy, its richness complemented by the brine of pickled sea beans and seaweed butter. Now the menu features beet, lemon, and lovage hilopites with peas and a smoky crema made from kefalotyri cheese. Souvlaki at Kaia can be anything skewered and grilled. I loved the innovation of this dish made with lion's mane mushrooms and sunchokes over puffed wild rice. It was such a textural collage (on one occasion, in a bad way, with undercooked and gritty sunchokes). The current version features skewered broad beans in their pod with lemon skordalia, a much lighter take for summer (and the GLP-1 crowd). The steamy season brought with it bright dishes that offer flavor without weighing diners down, such as assorted local cucumbers with tomato gelee. Kaia's elegant pile of seasonal lettuces with pine nut crisps, kefalotyri cheese, and a buttery vinaigrette is one of the best green salads I've had in a long time. Advertisement A whole grilled fish finished tableside with snipped herbs. Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff The flip side of that is the lamb neck gyro, a menu constant, unctuous, crisp-edged bites of meat with zucchini pita (cleverly scallion pancake-reminiscent), pickles, sunflower yogurt, and mint jam. I love lamb and will order it at any opportunity; for me, this dish is too heavy, too oily. Whole grilled fish is the opposite, finished with orange blossom honey and a snipped bouquet of herbs, lemony ladolemono sauce poured tableside. It's a lovely dish and a lovely presentation. (Note that our lavraki, Mediterranean sea bass, comes with a market price of $100, the only thing rich about it. This is one of two warnings I have about Kaia. The other is that I find the dining room layout a bit awkward, with the sun somehow always shining in my eyes. Eat later, you say? That's when the music CRANKS UP SO LOUD, which feels inconsonant with the rest of the package here. To avoid these issues, book on the earlier side in the more convivial, more comfortable bar and lounge.) Desserts here are wonderful: pagoto, goat's milk gelato served with seasonal fruit spoon sweets; a dense, moist coconut cake called ravani with plums and Greek yogurt; matcha baklava. But it is the Aegean 'kormos,' a riff on a traditional chocolate dessert, that I can't get enough of. It features semifreddo flavored with juniper and honey, a spill of icy, mountain tea granita, and a crunchy topping of pine nut praline. It is creamy, cooling, sweet, and herbal all at once. Advertisement Aegean "kormos," a juniper and honey semifreddo with mountain tea granita and pine nut praline. Erin Clark/Globe Staff Cocktails are excellent and innovative, incorporating ingredients like the chickpea liquid aquafaba, marigold, mastic. I'm not usually an espresso martini person, but the Chicory & Cardamom, a take on a Greek frappé made with Metaxa brandy, turned my head. The list of Greek wines, as at all Xenia restaurants, is thrilling; ask for guidance through its riches and you will be rewarded. Your gracious server will soon be offering toasts of 'ya mas!' with the rest of your table, after teaching everyone how to say 'cheers!' in Greek. As is always the case at restaurants, it is the people who make the experience memorable. At Kaia, the food matches the hospitality. Chefs work in the open kitchen at Kaia, allowing diners at the bar to watch food being prepared. Erin Clark/Globe Staff KAIA ★★★★★ 370 Harrison Ave., South End, Boston, 617-514-0700, Wheelchair accessible Prices Small plates $18-$38. Large plates and whole fish $74 and up. Desserts $8-$16. Cocktails $14-$18. Hours Daily 5-11 p.m. (Bar until 1 a.m.; patio seating Wed-Sun.) Noise level Fine on the early side; extremely loud later. ★★★★★ Extraordinary | ★★★★ Excellent | ★★★ Very good | ★★ Good | ★ Fair | (No stars) Poor Devra First can be reached at
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Miami Herald
Never-ending summer is changing Mediterranean holidays
For a growing number of holidaymakers, the rational response to the intense heat, high prices and overcrowding that blight the Mediterranean in July and August is to visit in the spring or fall. After all, the weather is cooler, hotels are better value and the vibe is more relaxed. This so-called "shoulder season" travel is booming. The trend could help ameliorate overtourism while boosting the use of aircraft and accommodation during the normally fallow winter months. But this rebalancing won't happen without a coordinated industry effort to keep resorts open and highlight the attractions of off-peak travel. Oh, and more flexible school holidays would also help. Europe is once again anticipating an influx of wealthy American visitors this year, but if they're sensible, those unrestricted by the school calendar will delay their visit until the autumn. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Delta Air Lines Inc. has seen a "multi-year" "systematic shift" of U.S. demand for European trips from July and August into the shoulder periods "as consumers look to avoid peak crowds and summer heat," its president, Glen Hauenstein, told investors earlier this month. "The peak is getting less peaky and the shoulders are getting stronger," he said. While anti-tourist protests and sweltering weather in southern Europe haven't impacted UK budget carrier EasyJet Plc's peak summer bookings, it's benefiting from more demand in the shoulder season. The final quarter of the calendar year has historically been loss-making, but there's hope for generating profits in the future thanks in part to the elongation of summer into October, Chief Executive Officer Kenton Jarvis told analysts in May. Greek carrier Aegean Airlines SA has also seen its financial performance improve in the October to December period amid more travel to and from Athens and Thessaloniki, which it attributes in part to climate change and milder winter temperatures creating a "gradual smoothing" of demand, Chairman Eftichios Vassilakis said in March. Inbound travelers to Greece increased 24% year on year in November, according to the Bank of Greece, while monthly travel receipts jumped 45% to €618 million ($727 million). American visitors to Greece boosted their spending that month by 78% and accounted for almost one-fifth of the total. Europe's short-term rental market is also seeing more demand in the autumn, according to AirDNA, which tracks listings on Airbnb and Vrbo; nights booked jumped 18% year on year in October 2024 and were 31% higher than the total in October 2019. Holidaymakers are taking advantage of lower off-season rates to book more upscale properties, and peak summer now represents a smaller share of total annual demand in popular vacation destinations. Amid evacuations due to summer wildfires and the Acropolis having to close during periods of extreme heat, I'm not surprised several travel firms now report more bookings in September than during peak summer. Selling active holidays in July and August can be challenging, according to Ben Colbridge, product and commercial director for Exodus Adventure Travels, whose offerings include hiking, cycling and cultural trips. "Most people don't want to be doing that sort of thing if the temperatures are above 40C," he told me, and those who must travel in July and August are increasingly picking cooler, northern destinations such as Scandinavia. Exodus's main European travel period used to run from May until the middle of October, but it's seeing a "creep at the edges" extending the season from April through the end of October. "Going forward we will start to push into the beginning of November in southern Europe," he said, while acknowledging that airline capacity in the shoulder season remains a limiting factor. Indeed, this nascent shift will only succeed if the travel industry coordinates to make off-peak visits more available and appealing, while being sensitive to local residents' concerns that this will cause an increase in overall demand (rather than just redistributing guests from the summer peak). Convincing restaurants, transport services and attractions to remain open longer isn't easy either. Seasonal workers often depart, and what if visitors don't come? "Prioritizing staff retention through flexible scheduling, short-term contract extensions, or end-of-season incentives is key to maintaining service quality," notes the nonprofit European Travel Commission. Resorts also need to offer more than just a sun lounger in case the weather turns inclement - culture, nature, sporting and wellness offers are essential. For example, German travel giant Tui AG is trying to appeal to runners by sponsoring marathons on Rhodes, Majorca and Cyprus in the off-season (and offering shorter races for accompanying family members). It would help, too, if families could be more flexible in their travel dates. Schools in England traditionally have a six-week summer holiday, but some institutions are opting for a shorter hiatus. As well as easing child care pressures and the potential educational benefits (kids forget much of what they've learned after a long break), this would mean the October half-term could be extended to a fortnight instead of one week - as is already the norm in Germany. The German school holiday system - which is also staggered by region to lessen the bunching of vacation bookings - is no panacea, though. Flights during the autumn half-term are often extortionate, as this Berlin-based columnist can confirm. Yet after experiencing the delights of Sicily in late October - when the beach was comparatively empty and the sea still invitingly warm - I've decided "shoulder season" vacations are the way forward. Please don't tell everybody. ___________ Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
