Sustainable travel is shifting demand to the shoulder seasons

What the numbers show

Booking.com, Hopper and Expedia have all reported double-digit growth in 'shoulder season' bookings (April–May and September–October) for European destinations over the past two years. Some Mediterranean regions now see September outperform July in both bookings and revenue per visitor.

Two drivers: weather (high summer is increasingly too hot in southern Europe), and overtourism (high-season visitors are reporting actively worse experiences). Both trends are structural, not cyclical.

The marketing implication

Shoulder-season campaigns need different creative. The 'sunshine and crowds' visuals that work in March no longer carry travellers to September trips. What does work: emptiness, light, intimacy with locals, longer stays, slower experiences.

Pricing experimentation matters too. Destinations and operators that lean into transparent shoulder pricing — making the trade-offs explicit — see meaningfully better conversion than those that just discount.

Where mountain destinations sit

For mountain destinations the picture is more complex but similar in shape. Summer in the mountains is rising fast as a category (cooler temperatures, family-friendly, scenic). And winter is increasingly split: enthusiast bookings concentrate in peak weeks, while the January and late-March windows attract a new audience of value-driven travellers — often booked late.