The holiday apartment in Alicante, Spain, has been a fixture of Lori Zaino’s in-laws’ family since her husband’s grandparents purchased it in the 1970s. As a baby, it’s where her husband took his first steps; he and Zaino have spent their summer holidays there almost every year for the last 16 years – now with a toddler in tow. Their families may look different each time they go, but each visit, year after year, has delivered everything they wanted from a Mediterranean summer holiday: sun, sand and plenty of beach time.
Until this year. A heat wave scorched southern Europe during their mid-July holiday, with temperatures of 46C and 47C in cities including Madrid, Seville and Rome. In Alicante, temperatures hit 39C, though the humidity made it feel hotter, Zaino says. A red-alert weather warning was issued. Palm trees toppled from water loss.
Living in Madrid for 16 years, Zaino is used to heat. “We live in certain ways, where you close the shutters midday, you stay inside and you take a siesta. But this summer was like nothing I’ve ever experienced,” Zaino said. “You can’t sleep at night. Midday, it’s unbearable – you can’t be outside. So until 16:00 or 17:00, you can’t leave the house.
“It didn’t feel like a vacation, in a way. It felt like we were just trapped.”
While climate events like Spain’s July heatwave have multiple causes, research regularly finds that they are many times more likely, and more intense, due to the human burning of fossil fuels. But they haven’t been the only consequence of human-induced carbon emissions in the Mediterranean this summer.
In July 2023, wildfires in Greece burned more than 54,000 hectares, almost five times more than the annual average, leading to the largest wildfire evacuations the country ever has initiated. Through August, other wildfires ripped across parts of Tenerife and Girona, Spain; Sarzedas, Portugal; and the Italian islands of Sardinia and Sicily, to name a few. Other worrying signs of rising temperatures seemed to be everywhere in Europe: drought in Portugal, thousands of jellyfish on French Riviera beaches, even a rise in mosquito-borne infections like dengue thanks to warmer temperatures and flooding resulting in less insect die-off.
Greece has been stricken by hundreds of wildfires this year, including one in Evros that burned for 17 days (Credit: Athanasios Gioumpasis/Getty Images)
While the changing climate will affect various regions differently, and although no part of the Earth is immune, scientists agree that southern Europe is seeing – and will continue to see – more heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, coastal floods and stronger wind storms, as well as periods of more intense rainfall. Much of that is falling during summer, the Mediterranean’s most popular tourist season.
These events aren’t just inconvenient or uncomfortable. They can be deadly. In Spain, nearly 1,000 people died in eight days of the July 2023 heatwave. The total human cost of Europe’s summer 2023 heatwaves has not yet been calculated. But summer 2022 – which was similarly scorching – led to a loss of more than 60,000 lives.
Against such a backdrop, there’s another loss that might seem far less important – but is a poignant reminder of how climate change is reshaping both our everyday and economic realities: the effect on the Mediterranean summer holiday.
Tourists have flocked to the Mediterranean for summer holidays for centuries. In ancient Roman times, those with means headed to Baiae, a resort town on the Bay of Naples, or to Greek islands (one particularly famous couple that seemed to have greatly enjoyed their visit to Samos was Antony and Cleopatra). Even today, the idea of lolling around on a sun-soaked coast attracts millions of tourists to countries like Greece, Spain and Italy each summer.
But that could be changing. A recent report by the European Travel Commission (ETC) found that Mediterranean countries remain the most popular destination for Europeans for June to November 2023. Still, compared to last year, the number of European tourists interested in going to Mediterranean countries has dropped 10%. Many travellers, meanwhile, are shifting their holiday dates: 5% more are opting for the “shoulder season” of October and November versus in 2022.
While “economic factors are having a significant impact”, said Eduardo Santander, the ETC’s executive director, “unease about weather conditions is also influencing where Europeans choose to go on holiday”. The ETC’s research found that nearly 8% of travellers specifically mentioned “extreme weather events” as their primary concern about travelling in Europe from June to November 2023.
The Mediterranean has long been a summer holiday hotspot, but that may start to change (Credit: Matteo Colombo/Getty Images)
Month-by-month data from particular countries points to more specific changes. Data shared with BBC Travel by Italy’s bureau of statistics, for example, shows that the country’s all-time record-breaking month for international arrivals was in July 2019, with 9,255,000 foreign visitors. By 2022, numbers had recovered, almost, to pre-Covid levels, with 9,064,000 visitors in July. Yet by the following year – July 2023 – it had sunk back down to 8,748,000.
Part of this could be down to consumers tightening their belts, with the ETC finding that nearly a quarter of respondents expressed concern about the rise of travel costs. And some could be instability as the tourism continues to recover from the Covid pandemic; in July 2023, international tourist arrivals globally still were at only 84% of pre-pandemic levels. But both research and anecdote point to the idea that some tourists may be changing the dates of their Mediterranean holidays, or not booking them entirely, because of climate change, too.
In Italy, for example, data also shows that, from January through April 2023, Italy had a 43% increase in foreign tourists compared to the same period in 2022.
“Consumers are aware of how climate change is affecting weather in Europe and what impact this could have on their holiday. This is having a notable effect on travel flows in Europe,” Santander said.
Meanwhile, other destinations are reaping benefits. More summer travellers are opting for destinations with milder temperatures like the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Ireland and Denmark, Santander says. The coastal British region of Cornwall, famed for its beaches and ocean views, has seen an uptick in visitors from countries like Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, according to Malcolm Bell, executive chair of Visit Cornwall. “We believe it’s partly driven by the cooler climate, [which] makes walking and cycling delightful rather than a sweat,” he said.
Cornwall has seen an uptick in visitors from countries like Germany, Italy and the Netherlands (Credit: Xantana/Getty Images)
And while the UK may not have the best reputation for weather, it’s all relative: for visitors from the Gulf Cooperation Council, the country’s climate was the number one motivation to visit, particularly for relief from the summer heat, while for Indian tourists, it was the third-highest, according to research by Visit Britain. As the world – including Britain – heats up, tourists from more regions could find the country looks like a good summer bet. (It’s important to note, however, that no region will be “safe” from climate impacts; Cornwall, for example, will see stronger storms, faster coastal erosion and more floods, heatwaves and droughts, along with a rapid sea level rise that could drown much of the current coastline.)
These trends are expected to continue, if not intensify, in the coming years. “Conditions in the summer in the Mediterranean are predicted to become worse,” said Bas Amelung, assistant professor of environmental systems analysis at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, who researches climate change and tourism impacts. “It’s still difficult to predict exactly what it will mean, but I think we have to prepare for the worst.”
One major report recently published by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre found that, as the climate warms, Europe’s southern coastal regions have the most to lose: on average, they’ll see 10% fewer tourists in the summer, particularly under a 3C or 4C warming scenario, than in 2019. Many of these visitors will shift to other seasons – but not all. The report cites that the Greek Ionian islands, for example, would still see a visitor drop of 9% annually. Other regions fare better: the same climate scenario would see a 16% annual rise in tourism to west Wales, for example.
“Southern European regions show an unequivocal signal towards worse conditions for tourism during summer,” the authors wrote, making many areas “potentially… unsuitable for tourism.”
Summer travellers will increasingly opt for destinations with milder temperatures, such as the Welsh coast (Credit: steved_np3/Getty Images)
The outlook is far better, the report notes, if, by the end of the century, the world has held to its promise of a 1.5C average global temperature rise. In that case, shifts are relatively minor, with the largest decline estimated to be in Cyprus, at nearly 2% fewer tourists than in 2019. This best-case scenario is growing increasingly unlikely, but, with concerted and quick effort, still within grasp.
Yet many Mediterranean destinations themselves either aren’t aware or don’t want to engage with this reality, Amelung says. He’s spoken to dozens of people working in the tourism industry in southern European countries. “Some of them are even doubtful, still, whether climate change is real,” he said. “Others were not really so concerned. There are always other issues that are more urgent.” Because so much of the tourism industry centres on small businesses, he says, the focus tends to be on surviving from one year to the next, rather than considering what longer-term trajectories might mean for the industry.
On 21 July 2023, on the back of the summer’s worst heat wave, Italy’s national tourism agency put out a press release. “No climate emergency, temperatures in the seasonal norm,” the headline read. “We are the land of sun, good weather, hospitality par excellence. And the numbers confirm that Italy is increasingly attractive,” the minister of tourism, Daniela Santanchè, is quoted as saying. “I realise that we are for this reason a very formidable competitor that leads foreign newspapers to exasperate the narrative about us, but the high temperatures are physiological in this season and do not compromise in any way our tourist offer.”
While global efforts to cut emissions continue, increased attention is being paid to the fact that climate changes already are here – and almost every industry will need to adapt. The tourism industry is no different. Strategies include more planning with climate change in mind, such as building new hotels with features like better insulation and air conditioning rather than leaving it to be retrofitted in five or 10 years time, said Amelung.
Other likely changes include Mediterranean destinations focusing their marketing more on the milder “shoulder seasons” of spring or autumn. (He also points out that if school schedules become more flexible in the future, families also would be able to travel more outside the summer months, while if schedules remain as they are, southern Europe’s tourism will face more dramatic impacts.)
In Spain, Zaino sees how these changes could help. Her in-laws recently went back to Alicante in early October, she says. It was stunning: 32C, sunny, “the weather you’re supposed to have in summer”. But she and her family still want to book a holiday for next summer. And, for the first time, they think they’ll make a change. For a slightly cooler, but still warm trip, the Canary Islands are on their radar. “It’s a whole different kind of trip,” she said. But hopefully one that they can enjoy more.
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