Five key reasons to read this article
- The era of carefree summer holidays is quietly ending. Discover why.
- Climate change is redrawing the global travel map. See how.
- Guilt, heat, and cost are reshaping how and whether we travel. Find out how.
- “Last-chance tourism” is rising. Understand what’s in it for you.
- Insurers turn creative. Learn what their response to climate change is.
The climate crisis fundamentally transformed our holidays in 2025, from where we go to when we travel, and even what we pay for the privilege.
In practice, European tourists are fleeing north to escape the Mediterranean heat, while last-chance travellers are scrambling to visit glaciers that are melting faster than their booking confirmations can print. Even the actuaries have joined the party, pricing our warming planet into every insurance policy.
This is the new geography of holidays in 2025:
1. The coolcation exodus: when escape means fleeing north
The great holiday climate migration is underway, and it’s heading north. The sun, once the ultimate travel trophy, has become a threat.
If you have tried to book a cabin in Scandinavia this month, you will realize the struggle. They have probably been sold out. This new trend is dubbed the coolcation, a trip defined not by luxury but cool temperatures.
You can see it in the numbers. Google searches for “cooler holiday destinations” are up by 300% year-on-year, according to a June report by Forbes. And bookings are following suit. Luxury travel network Virtuoso reports a 263% surge in trips to Nordic countries in 2025.
James Thornton, CEO of Intrepid Travel, has watched the shift firsthand: “Southern Europe was crowded, expensive, and facing natural challenges from climate change. What we’ve seen in 2024 and now 2025 is that demand for northern destinations has exploded.”
2. The shoulder season becomes the new summer
The summer holiday, once an immutable rite, is now a high-stakes lottery that the average traveler is simply refusing to play.
To avoid blistering heatwaves, holidaymakers are rewriting the calendar, turning spring and autumn into the new peak seasons. According to the 2025 European Travel Commission (ETC), 81% of Europeans now consider climate change when planning trips.
This aversion is strong. Survey data shows that 20% of Europeans are planning to travel outside the peak season, and 40% now intend to avoid destinations that are prone to extreme weather events altogether. This has given birth to the shoulder season boom.
Tim Hentschel, CEO of booking platform HotelPlanne, told CNN that autumn trips from the United States to Europe have surged by a quarter compared to last year, with traditional off-peak months now rivaling summer for bookings.
Andrea Girolami, who runs a hotel in Rome, has seen the transformation. May and June “used to be our peak months,” but summer occupancy declined in 2025. “This fall completely turned the usual trend on its head. October is definitely not the shoulder season anymore. I’ve never seen an autumn like this one.”
3. Last-chance tourism rush
Alongside comfort-seeking, a more frantic holiday habit is emerging – last-chance tourism (LCT). This is driven by the deeply human desire to see majestic natural wonders before they vanish due to climate change.
Tourists are now flocking to glaciers not to ski, but to say goodbye. The Alps illustrate this change vividly. Tourists flock to walk inside ice caves on rapidly receding glaciers like Switzerland’s Rhône Glacier, fully aware the experience may not exist for much longer.
In 2025, this trend is increasingly shaping holiday planning. Research shows roughly half of all visitors to European glacier sites now travel specifically to witness the ice before it melts, a clear shift from leisurely sightseeing to holidays that are urgency-driven.
4. The rise of the sustainable holidaymaker
While the climate crisis is reshaping where and when we travel, it is also changing how we travel and what we consider to be an acceptable holiday. Guilt, it transpires, is an excellent travel agent.
In 2025, 73% of European holidaymakers stated that sustainability matters when planning trips. In the UK, that figure hit 93%, which means that almost everyone booking a holiday is now having an internal debate about their carbon footprint. Meanwhile, 91% of Australian travelers state that they want to make more sustainable travel choices this year.
This is not just virtue signaling. Rail bookings are surging. Domestic travel is booming. People are actively choosing trains over planes, not because it’s cheaper, but because, in part, the cognitive dissonance of burning jet fuel to see a melting glacier has become unbearable.
5. Traditional travel insurance model under strain
The financial toll of the climate crisis has moved from corporate spreadsheets to our holiday checkout.
The old-school travel insurance model is creaking under the weight of climate chaos. Once a storm is given a name, it suddenly becomes a foreseeable event, and you can forget about buying coverage for it.
In response to this, innovative solutions such as parametric insurance, which pays out automatically when triggers like certain wind speeds are met, are rapidly moving from niche to mainstream in 2025.
Travel insurers in Asia report spikes in purchases of climate‑related coverage around severe weather events, and weather‑driven trip interruption claims have risen sharply with both factors informing premium pricing.
Insurance options are also disappearing due to severe climate vulnerabilities. Professor Xavier Font, a sustainable tourism expert, warns: “Some destinations are becoming uninsurable, which will make travel there rarer and more expensive.”
The insurance industry has done the math on climate change and is passing the invoice directly to you.
The verdict
The geography of holidays has been redrawn. The holiday as we knew it, cheap, carefree, predictable, is over. Travel is still possible. Adventure still exists. But the era of thoughtless escapism is over.
Welcome to holidays in the Anthropocene: strategic, seasonal, and never quite certain.
