Travel
Vital tourism income has been lost due to Mediterranean summer of wildfires and extreme heat
Next summer you might be able to claim on your travel insurance if extreme weather affects your holiday.
Tourists at a seaside hotel on the Greek island of Rhodes snatched up pails of pool water and damp towels as flames approached, rushing to help staff and locals extinguish one of the wildfires threatening Mediterranean locales during recent heatwaves.
The quick team effort meant that “by the time the fire brigade came, most of the fire actually was dealt with,” says Elena Korosteleva from the UK, who was vacationing at the Lindos Memories hotel.
The next morning, some unsettled guests cut their holiday short – but most stayed on as the resort wasn’t damaged in the small brush fire outside its grounds.
How is the Mediterranean recovering from the wildfires?
The Greek island known for sparkling beaches and ancient sites is nursing its wounds after 11 days of devastating wildfires in July.
After thousands of people were evacuated during the busy summer season, Rhodes is weighing how the crisis will affect its vital tourism sector, which fuels most of its economy and some 20% of Greece’s.
It’s the same for other Mediterranean destinations like Italy and Spain, where the tourism sector also is being hit by heatwaves and wildfires.
Greece, Italy, Algeria and Tunisia combined lost more than 1,350 square kilometers to blazes that affected 120,000 people in late July, according to European Union estimates. And Greece is expecting even more extreme heat in the coming days.
The mayor of Villardeciervos village, in the part of northwestern Spain ravaged by fires last summer, said hikers are still coming.
“Tourism is bound to suffer a bit in the next few years, (whether) we like it or not,” says Rosa María López. “On the hiking trails, there are no trees, and it is very sad to see. … But this area is still highly valued by tourists in spite of everything. We will have to adapt.”
Fires have chased away tourists in hard-hit parts of Greece and Italy.
Rhodes saw mass cancellations of flights and the trend is similar in Sicily, says Olivier Ponti, vice president of insights at ForwardKeys, a travel data company with access to flight data.
While travel to Greece overall has not been hit too hard, Italy isn’t as lucky. Wildfires “have caused a slowdown in bookings for many Italian destinations, even places not close to the fires,” he said, noting a drop for Rome in the last week of July.
Even without the flames, summer heat intensified by climate change can be a turnoff for travelers.
Hoteliers are worried in southeastern Spain’s coastal resort city of Benidorm, a longtime favorite for British and Scandinavian tourists.
“If heat waves were to be repeated every summer, the impact on our economy would be significant,” said Antonio Mayor, chair of the hotel and tourism association in the Valencia region, which includes Benidorm. “Our activity is centered on the three summer months.”
That could mean tourists head north to Scandinavian countries or the United Kingdom instead.
“Record-setting temperatures in European countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain are not scheduled to ease up as we enter August, so it might be considered a much safer option to opt for a stay in northern Europe,” said Tim Hentschel, CEO of digital booking platform HotelPlanner.
The World Meteorological Organisation and the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service calculated July to be the hottest month on record.
Heat records foreshadow changes ahead as the planet warms, scientists say, including more flooding, longer-burning wildfires and extreme weather events that put people at risk.
How travel insurance is adapting to extreme heat
With that in mind, US-based climate technology startup Sensible Weather is developing travel insurance that would compensate people if extreme heat wrecks their holiday.
It has rolled out ‘weather guarantee’ coverage to travel companies in the UK, France and the US, which pays travelers if prolonged rain ruins their beach break or there’s no snow for a ski trip.
Sensible Weather will soon add a heat cover option “in anticipation of next summer,” founder Nick Cavanaugh says. “People are asking me about it more because they’re thinking about these things more.”
While travellers differ on how hot is too hot, “in the simplest version, if it was 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit) for three hours in the middle of the day and you couldn’t go out and do an activity, we could give you some money back,” he said.
How is Rhodes trying to bounce back?
Rhodes had expected foreign arrivals to increase 8-10% over a bumper year in 2022, when about 2.6 million people flew in to the Greek island, mostly from Britain and Germany.
But after the fires, flight cancellations in the last week of July exceeded all bookings made in the equivalent week in 2019, says Ponti of ForwardKeys.
Manolis Markopoulos, head of the Rhodes hotel association, is optimistic that rebounding arrivals to parts of the island not damaged by flames can salvage much of the projected boost in tourism.
“Every day we’re seeing more business,” he said. “By 8-10 August, I think we’ll be back to our normal pace at all these resorts,” which account for about 90% of the island’s 220,000 beds.
In damaged areas, “some brave tour operators have already decided to bring customers from this coming weekend,” Markopoulos said. “These areas have a longer road before they return to normality – but they’re not even 10% of the (island’s) total capacity.”
New bookings for future travel to Rhodes did take a hit, falling 76% the week of 17 July, when the fires began, over the previous week. For Greece as a whole, they slumped 10%, Ponti says.
While some major British operators briefly canceled all Rhodes flights and holidays – offering refunds to people who’d booked for fire-hit areas – other budget airlines kept offering seats and reported normal travel figures, HotelPlanner’s Hentschel says.
In Germany, leading travel operator TUI is once again offering vacations to all parts of Rhodes after it stopped flying tourists in.
“We would do more damage to the people of Rhodes if no more tourists came now after the forest fires,” TUI CEO Sebastian Ebel told Germany’s dpa news agency.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced last week that tourists who had to evacuate during the Rhodes wildfires are welcome back for a free stay in 2024.
Korosteleva, the Rhodes holidaymaker, said the blazes should motivate action against climate change.
“It makes people aware what we’ve caused to the planet, that this change may not be reversible. So it’s not just about tourism,” said Korosteleva, who heads the University of Warwick’s Institute of Global Sustainable Development. “I think it actually clearly touches upon how we need to start acting now.”
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Interrail and Eurail passholders rejoice, as you can now skip the queues and reserve your seats on long- and medium-distance RENFE trains online.
Rail Europe, a European train booking platform, has expanded its offering to include trains operated by Spain’s state-owned railway, eliminating a major hurdle that has dogged rail passholders for years.
“The addition of RENFE’s passholder fares to our platform is a game-changer for travellers eager to explore Spain with ease,” says Jürgen Witte, Chief Product and Technology Officer of Rail Europe. “This enhancement ensures Interrail and Eurail Global Pass holders can navigate its world-class rail system seamlessly.”
With the new service, passholders can easily see if a seat reservation is required for their journey and what the associated costs will be.
From there, they can make their reservation online, eliminating the need for time-consuming in-person bookings where a lack of Spanish language skills is sometimes an issue.
What’s the problem with booking RENFE seats with a rail pass?
While many Interrail and Eurail trains don’t require seat reservations, Spanish high-speed trains – the Alta Velocidad Española (AVE) – do.
Although Interrail purports to allow bookings on some AVE trains via its self-service system, users report extensive issues in getting the platform to work. Some trains available on Interrail/Eurail are not bookable via the self-service system at all.
Previously, the only option to secure a seat reservation without buying a ticket on a RENFE high-speed train was to call the company. The traveller would then have to go to a RENFE station to pick up and pay for the reservation within 72 hours of booking, which is often not convenient.
“In Spain, almost all trains, apart from purely suburban ones, require a reservation, and RENFE’s own website doesn’t offer passholder reservations,” explains train travel expert Mark Smith, who runs the website The Man in Seat 61.
“Furthermore, Spanish trains can leave fully booked, so you ideally need to book ahead. This was a major issue for using an Interrail or Eurail pass in Spain.”
Smith warns that, particularly on peak travel days, such as Fridays and Saturdays in the summer months, queues can be atrocious. At major stations in Madrid and Barcelona, passengers can wait as long as one or two hours to be served.
The complexity has caused confusion and frustration among travellers. On the Eurail forum, one user said, “Not gonna jump through hoops to go to Spain. I’ll cancel the Spain leg and stay in France.”
How to book seat reservations with RENFE
To reserve a seat on a RENFE high-speed AVE train, simply head to the Rail Europe website.
Click ‘add rail pass’ below the journey planner and select the type and class of pass you hold. Then, you can search for a journey as normal, but you should only see the passholder reservation costs rather than the normal ticket costs.
Smith notes that the Rail Europe system defaults to a second-class reservation in the search results. Holders of first-class passes need to manually change the price drop-down if they want to reserve a first-class seat.
There are other options for booking seats on RENFE with a pass. These include using Dutch agency HappyRail, which has proven to be successful at booking seats on AVE trains, but charges a 3.5 per cent fee.
Interrail and Eurail reservation services have been available since 2023, but success is patchy. Smith notes that, when the systems do work, they allow booking in first or second class, but not in the ‘premium’ class that gets passholders Sala Club lounge access and a meal with wine included on AVE and Euromed trains.
Smith has long recommended Rail Europe as a booking service for Interrail and Eurail passholders, as it has more seat choices, more benefits for first-class passholders, and no booking fees.
“This is a big step forward,” says Smith, “and if one system won’t get you the reservation you want, try the other.”
Where can you travel with RENFE?
RENFE operates a comprehensive route network across Spain, with both its AVE (high-speed) and Larga Distancia (long-distance) trains. On the map below, the purple lines are AVE trains, and the grey lines are the slower long-distance routes.
As well as travelling within Spain, RENFE connects to several international destinations. These include Oporto in Portugal and several destinations in France.
From 23 April, RENFE will launch a new direct Seville-Barcelona train service, cutting out the transfer in Madrid and making it easier to get between the two popular cities.
Along the way, it stops in Córdoba, Puertollano, Ciudad Real, Madrid, Zaragoza, Lleida, Tarragona, and Girona, which are all attractive destinations to visit, too. The high-speed service takes around six hours and is set to make travel between the south and northeast of Spain a much more convenient option.
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Brits planning travel to Europe are being warned by an industry body not to fall for scams amid confusion over entry and exit rules.
With the UK’s Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA)coming into force this week, scammers are busy taking advantage of the uncertainty. The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) has warned of fake websites offering a similar pass to British travellers heading into mainland Europe.
From 2 April, Europeans who don’t have a British passport are required to obtain an ETA to visit the UK. The Electronic Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) is a similar system that will affect UK travellers heading to Europe.
However, ETIAS is not due to launch for another 18 months, and there is presently no requirement for Brits to obtain any additional documentation to travel.
What authorisations are currently required for travel between the UK and the EU?
The UK’s ETA came into force for Europeans on 2 April, and means any EU passport holders will need to apply for and secure an ETA before visiting the UK.
The scheme has been live for visitors from non-European visa-free nationalities since January. However, its rollout has come with plenty of hiccups and confusion.
“If you have friends, family, or business associates visiting from abroad, they’ll need to check if they need to get an ETA,” says ABTA. “This is one of three changes coming up for travelling across borders between the EU and UK, but the only one to have gone live, meaning there is scope for confusion.”
There is an equivalent rule coming in for Brits traveling to Europe – the ETIAS. However, the ETIAS won’t be introduced until the new EU Entry/Exit system (EES) goes live.
The EES has been pushed back several times already, but is presently anticipated to launch in October 2025. It will be rolled out in stages, so not all changes will take effect immediately.
The ETIAS is expected to be introduced in 2026, and ABTA says likely not before the end of 2026. Even then, ETIAS is expected to be optional for at least six months. Right now, there is no additional documentation required for Brits to holiday in Europe.
“With three new changes coming in over the next couple of years, we’re keen that people understand what it means for them,” says Graeme Buck, director of communications at ABTA. “In short, the only thing to act on now is for European visitors to the UK to apply for an ETA. Nothing will be changing for UK travellers going to Europe this summer.”
How to apply for ETIAS when it comes into effect
ETIAS will be similar to the US ESTA scheme, where a simple online application grants permission to travel within the relevant area for a period of time.
For the EU scheme, the cost of an ETIAS is expected to be around €7 and will be valid for up to three years (or until the passport reaches three months to expiry). It will allow British visitors to stay in any EU country (or countries) for up to 90 days in any 180 day period.
According to the EU, third-country nationals, including the UK, will be granted a ‘grace period’ of six months on a one-time basis if they forget their ETIAS.
“Those coming to Europe for the first time since the end of the transitional period will be allowed to enter without an ETIAS provided they fulfil all remaining entry conditions,” the EU says.
ABTA warns that “people who try to apply for an ETIAS now may be at risk of fraud, with a loss of money and possibly personal data too.”
When the time does come, the only place to apply for an ETIAS will be on the official website. Any apps, websites, or social media posts suggesting there is an alternative route are impostors.
Travellers will need to submit personal information and passport data, as well as disclose any serious convictions in the past 20 years. They must state the reason for their travel and where they will be staying, as well as the Schengen Area country they will first be visiting.
The fee is payable for all applicants aged between 18 and 70. Those under 18 or over 70 will still need to apply for the document, but won’t be charged.
“With two further changes planned, the situation may not seem simple,” adds Buck. “As the changes affecting UK travellers start to come in towards the end of the year, ABTA and our members will be on hand to support travellers.”
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There’s good news if you are young and looking for a budget-friendly way to explore Europe this summer.
The EU is giving away almost 36,000 free rail passes to 18-year-olds under the DiscoverEU scheme.
Introduced by Interrail and the EU, the scheme aims to give young Europeans the opportunity to learn about their neighbouring countries and cultures.
Those eligible will be able to explore Europe’s heritage and history while meeting people from across the continent.
All you need to do is answer six questions.
DiscoverEU: How to apply for a free EU rail pass
To be in with a chance of winning a free rail pass, applicants must be born between 1 July 2006 and 30 June 2007.
The scheme is open to legal residents of the 27 EU member states or Overseas Countries. Residents of third countries associated with the Erasmus+ programme can also apply. These include Iceland, Liechtenstein, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia and Türkiye.
If that’s you, the next stage is to head to the European Youth Portal to take an eligibility quiz.
You will have to answer five multiple-choice questions about the EU and one additional question. These cover general knowledge about the EU and its initiatives aimed at young people.
You will also be asked to give more information about your travel plans. This includes when you plan to travel, whether it will be the first time you have travelled alone without your parents, what you would like to learn from the experience and how you will finance your trip.
This information will not have any impact on the selection process.
The Commission will rank applicants based on their EU quiz responses and will offer travel passes following their ranking up to the limit of available tickets.
Applications are open from 2 April to 16 April 2025.
You cannot apply if you have previously been given a DiscoverEU pass.
How will the free rail pass scheme work?
Those who prove successful will get a free rail pass to travel in Europe for up to 30 days between 1 July 2025 and 30 September 2026.
At the application stage, you can choose to either travel alone or with a group of up to five friends. If you choose to travel as a group, you can share your application code with your friends to allow their registration.
Only the group leader has to answer the EU quiz questions; group members just need to supply personal data to complete the application and fulfil the age and residency criteria.
The travel pass can be used in your residency country only for one outbound and one inbound journey. It must include travel to at least one other country eligible under the scheme.
The overall journey can last from one day up to a maximum of one month, including up to seven travel days.
Participants will generally be eligible for a pass worth up to €283.26 in second or economy class. The amount may be raised for applicants travelling from remote or overseas regions.
In some cases, coach and ferry passes will be included too. To ensure young people living in remote areas or on islands are not excluded, flights may also be awarded in exceptional cases. Preference will always be given to the most sustainable option.
If you’re one of the lucky awardees, you will also be given a European Youth Card (EYCA) valid for one year. This grants discounts for cultural visits and activities, learning, nature, sports, local transportation, accommodation, food and more across the EU.
How will applicants for the free rail pass be selected?
Applicants will be selected up to the available budget and ranked following the correctness of their replies.
There is a quota of travel passes set for each country. If a country has fewer applications than the quota, the remaining passes will be distributed to countries with a higher number of applications.
If there are too many eligible applicants, a ‘first come, first served’ principle will apply – meaning earlier applications could be favoured as a last resort.
Special support is available for participants with disabilities or health conditions.
Successful applicants will be notified by email after the selection period has ended in May.
They will then be connected with an EU contractor who will take care of the travel bookings and payments.
Passes purchased directly by the selected applicants will not be reimbursed.
Is anything expected in return for the free rail passes?
When you apply for a free pass, you are invited to become a ‘DiscoverEU Ambassador’. This means you are encouraged to report back on your travel experiences through social media or school and community presentations.
The scheme’s app will allow you to create a customised map of your itinerary with statistics on the number of trains taken, number of countries visited and CO2 savings, which can be shared on social media.
Young travellers will also need to report back in an online survey after taking part in the scheme.
On its completion, travellers will receive a certificate of participation highlighting competencies and skills gained from their travel experience.
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