The next European researchers of climate change presented their report, where gloomy forecasts were sounded for tourists. The latest report, published by the EU’s Joint Research Centre, names scenarios and temperatures under which the favorite resorts of tourists in the Mediterranean will gradually become more and more empty.
In general, the report considers four different temperature scenarios – according to which the increase in the average annual temperature will be from +1.5 to +4. Among them, it was stated that the last two scenarios will affect typical European tourism.
So, if the temperature rises by 3-4 degrees, then the number of tourists going to the tourist regions of the south of Europe, not only in resorts, but also in urban tourism, will decrease by at least 10%, and the demand for the northern regions will increase by 5%. At the same time, the distribution of demand by season will also change: more people will travel in the velvet season, as well as in spring, but the hottest months will become the same off-season that summer is now, for example, for the UAE.
“Who would want to be in Athens or Rome at a temperature of +45 degrees or even higher?”, Marco Gardini, professor of tourism, international hotel management and marketing at the University of Applied Sciences Kempten, commented on the situation. Therefore, as temperatures rise, tourist flows will inevitably change, he noted.
According to some experts, the Mediterranean will retain its tourist appeal, but the concept of “high season” will change, the season will go beyond the period from July to September. “Tourists will move the vacation period from the hot summer months to spring or autumn. Thus, the long-awaited aspiration to extend the season until the end of the year can finally be realized,” Alvaro Blanco, the Spanish tourism attaché in Berlin, optimistically assessed.
It is also assumed that the geographical boundaries of the most popular resorts will also expand — “cooler” countries will win. Thus, the general director of TUI, Sebastian Ebel, assumes that tourists will be attracted by countries with more moderate temperatures, such as Poland, the Netherlands, and Belgium.
Another trend was suggested by Harald Zeiss, professor of the Department of Sustainable Development and International Tourism at the University of Applied Sciences of Harz University. He not only suggested that demand would shift towards the “edges” of the summer season and destinations with a milder climate, but also added: “Since there will be no stable weather conditions, short-term booking patterns will develop. Who wants to vacation in a place where, for example, there are forest fires? You have to be ready for that too.”
Let us add that forecasts are forecasts, and practice is practice. And although demand growth was recorded in the “cooler” destinations this summer, mass tour operators have not yet noted any major changes. Thus, the German tour operator FTI states that there are no signs of a change of season and major changes in the structure of bookings and preferences of tourists so far.
We will remind you that earlier an alarming prediction that “customary tourism in the Mediterranean is coming to an end” exploded in Turkey. According to their statements, extreme heat waves on the southern coast of Europe are sending vacationers to cooler countries. The program for booking Little Emperor hotels “raised” another reason for concern about the Turks. Its researchers noted that there has been a significant increase in bookings in alternative cool destinations such as Norway: “Because of the heat, people are looking for cooler places, which has given the Scandinavian countries a great opportunity to stand out as a summer destination,” the authors estimate. Read details here.