Venice, Italy on June 29, 2023|Gian Luca Sgaggero|CC ND BY 2.0
Extreme heat, floods, and other factors driven by climate change are taking tourists away from summer travel destinations as people choose cooler places instead or prefer to go there earlier in the year to avoid extreme temperatures.
Coastal summer hangouts like New Jersey and Florida, which typically attract tourism during July, see a decline in tourists as they are considered unsafe due to “sunny-day floods” caused when seas rise.
Travelers skip popular European spots too
Travel agents notice customers prefer colder Northern European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam over summer tourist hotspots like Italy, Greece, France and Spain, planning trips to these warmer travel hotspots during cooler periods in September or October.
How is climate change altering travel plans?
- Trains in Britain are canceled or delayed due to overheated tracks this summer.
- Wildfires are raging in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, including Athens.
Climate change has also irreversibly affected many destinations leaving travelers with no option but to cancel their dream travel plans.
- About 15% of the coral reefs on Earth were lost in the last 10 years, challenging avid snorkelers.
- Glaciers are melting away like ice cream in a toddler’s hand on a hot sunny day. In the last 50 years, Glacier National Park’s glaciers shrunk by 80% in their size.
- The highest glacier in Mount Everest has lost 2000 years’ worth of ice in just 30 years.