Extreme weather is changing Europe's tourism and the travel industry isn't ready - The Straits Times

ATHENS – An idyllic summer vacation turned into a nightmare after thousands of people were evacuated from Greek islands beset by wildfires – the latest reminder that Europe’s tourism industry needs to confront the realities of climate change and adapt fast.

Summers have been getting more intense in southern Europe, and the blazes in Greece are a grim repeat of deadly fires that devastated the country in 2021.

Unbearable heat in 2023 has forced the authorities to shut the Acropolis and driven tourists on the Italian island of Sardinia indoors. And that is with just 1.2 deg C of global warming from pre-industrial levels. Scientists say it is going to get worse even if we contain the temperature rise to the Paris Agreement’s goal of 2 deg C.

Climate change is set to make the tourist-friendly weather in some places unrecognisable.

A 2019 study predicted that Madrid’s climate in 2050 will resemble the North African city of Marrakesh; London will be more like Barcelona and Stockholm like Budapest.

This would be a tectonic shift for Europe’s travel and tourism industry, which contributed €1.9 trillion (S$2.8 trillion) to the regional economy in 2022, and remap travel patterns in a way that will likely deal a blow to some countries in southern Europe.

The industry may not have fully factored that in yet. “There’s still quite a big part of the industry that’s literally just waking up,” said Ms Catharina Martinez-Pardo, a partner at Boston Consulting Group, who specialises in climate and sustainability in hospitality. “I don’t think they’re really ready.”

About 19,000 people had to be evacuated at the weekend from the Greek island of Rhodes as wildfires continued to blaze and flights were cancelled. For the past few days, beach-goers had been watching as firefighter planes made water landings to pick up supplies – an eerie backdrop to people swimming or doing water sports.

At the weekend, many tourists who had gone on day trips could not return to their hotels to collect their passports and belongings.

A shelter in Faliraki accommodated at least 100 people, some of them still in their swimsuits. That included providing a buffet of fresh watermelon and honeydew for weary travellers.

Elsewhere, tourists housed in sports facilities, conference centres, hotels and public buildings were given food and water, according to Greece’s Civil Protection Ministry. A special area has been set up in the Rhodes airport with fold-up beds for families with children and those with special needs, the ministry said.

But the region’s tourism industry is unlikely to make long-term commercial decisions based on immediate events this summer, said Mr Tom Jenkins, chief executive of the European Tourism Association. “Will the industry have to change in advance of customer behaviour?” he said. “I think it would be very odd for them to do so.”

TUI, a German travel company, and airline EasyJet both said last week that they saw little reaction to the extreme heat. But the temperatures are already having an impact on travellers elsewhere. In the United States last week, passengers were left sitting on a Delta plane for hours in the sweltering heat as they waited to take off from Las Vegas to Atlanta.

Even though Europe’s tourism sector is estimated to grow at an average annual rate of 3.3 per cent up to 2032, the frequency of extreme events in southern Europe may push travellers to destinations in the northern part of the continent.

Heatwaves may “reduce southern Europe’s attractiveness as a tourist destination in the longer term or at the very least reduce demand in summer,” Moody’s Investors Service said on Monday.

Some researchers have modelled extreme scenarios to gauge the fallout for different parts of the economy.

In a world that reached 4 deg C of warming alongside ecological breakdown there would be a steep drop of more than 9 per cent in tourism to the Greek Ionian islands, according to a European Commission report published in 2023. The same scenario would see an increase in tourism by about 16 per cent to western Wales.

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