Why more people are booking Europe trips in shoulder season

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2 days ago

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On paper, our European summer getaway was perfect: a beach resort in Bodrum, a Greek Islands cruise and family downtime in Athens.
Obviously, travelling during the July school holidays – a necessity for my family – was far from ideal, but how bad could the weather really be?
We arrived to temperatures in the mid-40s, shutting down key attractions such as the Acropolis due to safety concerns, and keeping us Airbnb-bound until well after sunset. 'Why couldn't we have done this in the October school holidays?' my daughter whined and I had to admit she had a point. Our holiday was too hot, too crowded and too stressful.
It's a conversation we're revisiting in our household as news hits that Intrepid Travel has 'cancelled' July and August 2025 departures to Spain and Portugal. It sounds dramatic as a headline (and certainly got us talking) – except for the fact that there were no actual cancellations of scheduled trips.
Intrepid Travel's ANZ managing director Brett Mitchell clarifies: 'In our early planning last year, we allocated fewer departures for some of our active trips in Europe in July and August, shifting this capacity to April, May and September in response to higher demand for shoulder season travel.'
We arrived to temperatures in the mid-40s, shutting down key attractions such as the Acropolis due to safety concerns.
While a small number of active trips in Spain and Portugal during this time have fewer allocations, Mitchell adds that the total number of departures on active trips in southern Europe has increased throughout spring and autumn. 'We recognise the reality of over tourism and hotter weather in some destinations and seek to continuously evolve our trips to help disperse travellers to new and exciting places and provide opportunities to travel at different times,' he says.
It makes sense that tour operators such as Intrepid Travel, ever mindful of traveller safety and security, need to be more agile than ever. This northern summer record-breaking heat is being recorded across Europe, with Granada in Spain and Mora in Portugal hitting a touch over 46C, and Italy releasing figures which show a 15-20 per cent increase in hospital admissions this season related to excessive heat, as well as the heatstroke-related deaths of seven tourists.
Unsurprisingly, local councils aren't taking any chances. In early July the top floor of the Eiffel Tower was closed for two consecutive days when Paris temperatures lurched towards 40C – a move mirrored at the Atomium in Brussels. It's bad news for tourists already there and even worse news for planet Earth. So where does it leave those of us still dreaming and planning our European getaways?
In early July the top floor of the Eiffel Tower was closed for two consecutive days when Paris temperatures lurched towards 40C.
Personally, I would now only holiday in Italy or Greece during the shoulder seasons, and Mitchell says I'm far from alone, explaining that more than half of their travellers (55 per cent) – enticed by cooler weather, fewer crowds and lower costs – are now heading to southern Europe outside June to August.
'Subsequently, we've added more trips outside of summer, like Highlights of Italy in Winter, which runs from November through March, and we've made changes to summer tours too,' Michell says. 'In Dubrovnik, for example, our leaders now visit the city walls early in the morning or later in the evening when it's cooler and quieter.'
Still hankering for the kind of European summer we enjoyed back in the '80s and '90s? We can beat the heat by venturing to 'coolcation' destinations, such as Iceland, Scotland, Norway and Finland. We can't do anything about the crowds, though; the way things are going, that's where we'll all be heading soon enough and that's a fact.
Originally published as I took my family to Southern Europe in July. It was too hot and too crowded