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Vital tourism income has been lost due to Mediterranean summer of wildfires and extreme heat

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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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  • Daniela Daecher

    Daniela Daecher is a twenty-something bookworm and coffee addict with a passion for geeking out over sci fi, tv, movies, and books. In 2013 she completed her BA in English with a specialization in Linguistics. In 2014 she completed her MA in Linguistics, focusing on the relationship between language and communication in written form. She currently lives in Munich, Germany.

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Intercités, Ouigo, TER: France announces discounted train fares throughout September

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Want to explore France by train this September? Look out for these cheap ticket sales.

Sad to see the end of summer? September is still a great time for a train adventure thanks to extended deals from French national rail operator SNCF.

Throughout the month, its ‘Les Jours Traincroyables’ campaign promises to “extend the summer” with a series of ticket offers on Intercités, Ouigo, TER and TGV INOUI trains.

Various flash sales are planned until 30 September offering discounted journeys on regional and longer distance high-speed services.

To secure cheap train travel in France and beyond, here are the dates to put in your calendar.

Flash sales on French trains this September

SNCF Voyageurs’ month of discounts kicks off with a Ouigo flash sale on 4-5 September. It will see 200,000 tickets on the operator’s classic and high-speed trains sold for a maximum of €19 each.

The high-speed train service offers low-cost travel throughout France and onward to destinations in Spain.

Stay on alert from 10-13 September, when 30,000 tickets between Normandy and Paris costing no more than €12 will be released in the Nomad Train Flash Sale.

Cheap tickets (between €3 and €13) will also be available in the eastern region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, and to or from Paris, all month long.

Further west, under-26-year-olds can take advantage of €4 to €15 tickets for travel in Brittany, while down south in Nouvelle-Aquitaine under-28s can travel for just €2.

Heading to the northern Hauts-de-France region? Here, bargain €2 train tickets have no age limit – and 5,000 of them will be released each day throughout September.

To catch the end of the green season in the mountains, travel on Saturdays for a 40 per cent group discount on TER Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes trains.

Cheap train travel in Europe this September

The train ticket deals aren’t limited to French destinations. Between 18-29 September, you can discover Europe thanks to €39 tickets with TGV INOUI and TGV Lyria.

TGV INOUI operates high-speed trains to over 200 destinations in France and Europe, including in Germany, Italy and Spain, while TGV Lyria operates between France and Switzerland.

A further sale on TGV INOUI and Intercités trains from 23-27 September will offer tickets from €19 to €29, with an upgrade to first-class costing just €1 extra.

For cheaper train travel in Europe all year round, take advantage of the Carte Liberté, which offers fixed rate discounts to frequent travellers and is currently available at up to €80 off.

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  • Daniela Daecher

    Daniela Daecher is a twenty-something bookworm and coffee addict with a passion for geeking out over sci fi, tv, movies, and books. In 2013 she completed her BA in English with a specialization in Linguistics. In 2014 she completed her MA in Linguistics, focusing on the relationship between language and communication in written form. She currently lives in Munich, Germany.

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Flying on a plane is safer now than ever before, study finds

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A recent study has found that flights are safer than they’ve ever been.

There’s a one in 13.7 million chance that a passenger anywhere in the world will die onboard an aircraft, according to a new study.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US analysed global passenger and fatality data between 2018 and 2022 and found deaths on planes dropped by an average of 7 per cent year over year.

Those results follow a pattern of “continuous improvement” that started in 1968 when the death rate fell an average of 7.5 per cent per year even as more flights took off and landed.

It comes as US aircraft manufacturer Boeing faces a series of technical issues that forced the company to ground the test flights of their 777-9 model. The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) also reportedly has launched inspections into the 787 Dreamliner due to faulty pilot seat movements.

Death rate 36 per cent higher in some countries

The incident rate depends on what countries people are flying to and from, with researchers dividing countries into three tiers for low, medium and high risk based on air safety record.

The lowest risk is the Tier 1 group which includes the European Union, Australia, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Some examples of countries in the Tier 2 group include Bahrain, Bosnia, Brazil, Brunei, Chile, Hong Kong, India, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

The rest of the world’s countries are in Tier 3 or the high-risk group.

For the first two tiers, the death risk falls to one per 80 million passenger boardings, the study found. These countries account for more than half of the world’s 8 billion people.

“At that rate, a passenger could on average choose one flight at random every day for 220,000 years before succumbing to a fatal accident,” the report continued.

The fatality risk is around 36 per cent higher for tier 3 countries, the study found, but fatalities are still falling.

“While [these nations] continue to get better over time, their passenger death risk remains many times as high as the risk elsewhere,” the study says.

The study also didn’t include any accidents that were direct attacks on passengers, like a suicide bombing at Kabul airport in 2021 that killed 170 Afghans and 13 US military troops.

Over 4,000 deaths from catching COVID on a plane

The study accounts for the COVID-19 pandemic which they defined as the period from March 2020 to December 2022. While there were fewer airline passengers during the pandemic, those who travelled faced a “new source of danger” if exposed to the virus on a flight.

Airlines at the time told passengers that COVID-19 transmission was “all but impossible,” the researchers say in their study, even though the US surgeon general estimated that 96 per cent of flights during that time had at least one positive passenger.

Despite that new risk, researchers say that there “is no evidence that those who did fly suffered a greater risk of death from plane crashes or attacks than would have been expected had the pandemic never occurred”.

“Outside of on-board transmission of COVID-19, passenger safety did improve sharply,” the study said.

In total, the paper estimates that roughly 4,760 people died from contracting a COVID-19 infection on a flight from March 2020 to December 2022.

The MIT researchers do admit that it’s hard to know the exact number of deaths since passengers who got an infection after a flight could’ve passed it on to others who might have passed away.

“These estimates about COVID-19 deaths are necessarily imprecise,” the study says. “And while they use lower-end parameter estimates, they could well be too high”.

Their data also doesn’t count any passengers under 18 and doesn’t differentiate the age of any passengers over 65, which the researchers say is important because mortality goes sharply up for the elderly.

Author

  • Daniela Daecher

    Daniela Daecher is a twenty-something bookworm and coffee addict with a passion for geeking out over sci fi, tv, movies, and books. In 2013 she completed her BA in English with a specialization in Linguistics. In 2014 she completed her MA in Linguistics, focusing on the relationship between language and communication in written form. She currently lives in Munich, Germany.

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‘Paradise ruined’: Why Spanish locals fed up with overtourism are blocking zebra crossings 

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In northwestern Spain, villagers blocked zebra crossings to protest too many tourists – but ended up causing a huge traffic jam.

Spain has seen many overtourism protests this year, but one small village has been making its grievances known in a very unusual way.

In the Galician village of O Hío in northwest Spain, locals took it upon themselves to protest against the volume of tourists by blocking zebra crossings.

Walking up and down them for a total of 37 minutes, they caused total traffic gridlock – worsening the exact problem they hoped to highlight.

Nevertheless, residents stand by their decision.

Why are Spanish locals blocking zebra crossings?

“Traffic problems are already common, but this year they have tripled at least,” resident Mercedes Villar told local newspaper La Voz de Galicia. “It’s an avalanche of cars that not only pollutes but also affects everyone’s lives because they park wherever they want. We have the right to live too.”

Locals from the small coastal village say, while they’re not against tourism per se, they want authorities to find a mutually beneficial solution so that residents and visitors can co-exist happily.

They say their driveways are being blocked, traffic accidents are increasingly common and that parking-controlling yellow lines are being ignored.

“The protest was meant to raise awareness and sound the alarm,” another villager told La Voz. “We want people to be civil and understanding and, if they see that there is no parking space, to leave, as we all have to do in any city.”

Rogue parking by tourists creates ‘danger’ for locals

Villar, who is the spokesperson for the residents’ association, added that while locals tend to park their cars properly, visitors who don’t are creating “a situation of insecurity and danger”.

Villagers raised concerns that the situation causes access problems for emergency vehicles, citing residents who needed to be collected by ambulance, but found the exits from their houses blocked or their transport delayed due to the sheer number of vehicles on the streets.

Speaking to La Voz, Villar added that the significant amount of traffic had led to “uncivil” behaviour, including visitors littering the roads and parking areas.

She also says that too much traffic has led to the deterioration of some roads. “We want orderly and polite tourism that respects the environment. This is a paradise, but paradises also get ruined,” she said.

Locals have been invited to discuss their complaints

Like many Spanish people protesting against overtourism, Villar believes that the growing popularity of her local area has a lot to do with social media’s impact.

“This is sold as a beautiful place with no people, but now that is not true,” she explained, adding that residents tend to avoid beaches during tourist season as they are simply too busy.

She hopes that the zebra crossing protests will have laid bare how “annoyed” locals are with the situation.

It seems to have worked – in response, the local council has invited disgruntled locals to a meeting to discuss their complaints later in September.

From Cantabria in the north to Málaga in the south, growing numbers of Spanish people are calling for the government to change the face of mass tourism, which they believe is getting out of hand.

They say its impact is having a negative effect on property prices and rents as well as standard of living for residents.

Author

  • Daniela Daecher

    Daniela Daecher is a twenty-something bookworm and coffee addict with a passion for geeking out over sci fi, tv, movies, and books. In 2013 she completed her BA in English with a specialization in Linguistics. In 2014 she completed her MA in Linguistics, focusing on the relationship between language and communication in written form. She currently lives in Munich, Germany.

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