I used to have a great travel tip for Europe. It doesn’t work any more

February 4, 2026 — 5:05am

I used to have a great tip for travel to Rome. For all of Southern Europe, really.

Don’t go at the height of summer. Forgo the desire to experience the traditional European hot-weather vacation and instead opt for the cooler months either side, the shoulder seasons, when crowd numbers are down and prices are heading the same way.

April, May, that was your sweet spot. September, October, also great. The tourist hordes had all gone home, the weather was cool and pleasant, you could actually get into a few places and enjoy them, even if you couldn’t really go to the beach.

That advice now is like an investment in a ski resort: increasingly worthless.

That’s largely because the weather has changed. In July 1995 – which is 30 years ago, for those counting – the average daily high temperature in Rome was 28.9 degrees. Last year in July, that daily high was 31.5 degrees.

Two days hit 35 degrees in Rome last July. Another couple hit 34. The following month, also traditionally popular with tourists, the temperature hit 36 degrees one day, and 35 on another three days.

If you’ve ever been in Rome at the height of summer you know how unpleasant 35 degrees would be in the Eternal City. It’s stifling. All that concrete, all that humidity. It bears down on you. It’s all you can do to line up for a gelato and then try to inhale it before it all dribbles onto the searing pavement below.

In that way, you would think my advice to avoid peak summer and travel during the shoulder seasons would be even more important. But many of the reasons for giving that advice – the crowds are down, it’s cheaper to travel, the weather is cooler – don’t really apply any more.

Everyone’s onto it. Many, many tourists have seen the reports of massive heatwaves throughout Europe in the height of summer, through beachy hotspots like Greece, Italy, southern France and Spain. They understand that it’s actually nicer in September or even October, when the average high in Rome is 23 degrees, which is perfectly lovely.

According to booking engine Webjet, Australians last year booked almost as many flights to Europe in May and September as they did in July and August. The cat is out of the bag: shoulder seasons are now more like peak seasons.

This is just one example, however, of the way climate change is beginning to directly impact travel, the way it is altering the nature of some of the destinations we love, and our behaviour towards them.

Want a beach holiday in Europe at the height of summer? Maybe you don’t take that in the traditional spots any more, in the south of Spain or Italy, or the Greek islands. Maybe Spain’s northern coast is better, or France’s Atlantic coast, or even Scandinavia (the average high temperature in Stockholm in July is 24 degrees).

Even in the shoulder seasons you will need to look to lesser-known destinations if you hope to benefit from lower prices and smaller crowds.

Skiers and snowboarders are also having to adjust their plans and even their expectations as global weather patterns change. Snow levels are dropping, ski seasons becoming more unpredictable, and in some places becoming markedly shorter. This is happening in North America, in Europe, in Australia and in New Zealand.

In this case, the solution is not to take advantage of shoulder seasons but to avoid them, given the increased chance there won’t be much snow.

Of course, extreme weather events are becoming more common due to climate change, so you could end up in a massive blizzard (in December 2024, Niseko in Japan had six metres of snow – six metres!), but you could also end up sunbathing.

Global ice reserves are melting and sea levels rising, threatening the likes of Venice with increased flooding, but also the very existence of low-lying holiday destinations such as the Maldives, and islands in the Pacific.

Bushfires have also ripped through plenty of tourist-favourite destinations in recent years: Jasper, the Canadian mountain town known for its skiing, was entirely evacuated in 2024; there were huge fires in Rhodes in Greece in 2023; Maui was devastated in the same year; just last month fires ravaged large parts of Patagonia in Argentina and Chile.

Tell me you’re getting travel insurance these days. Tell me it covers natural disasters.

This is the awkward moment, too, where we travellers acknowledge our contribution to this problem. Sustainable Travel International estimates global tourism is responsible for 8 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions.

Travellers are having to change their habits to avoid the effects of climate change, but should also change their habits to avoid making the problem worse. That means cutting down on flights, travelling overland where possible, utilising public transport, staying with accommodation providers that take sustainability seriously.

It’s also more sustainable to spread the load when it comes to tourist numbers, which peak in the warmer months. So, it’s worth mentioning that Rome in winter is gorgeous.