Sun, Jul 07, 2024 page12

• Tourists seek out Nordic vacations to keep cool

  With climate change pushing temperatures higher in already crowded travel hot spots such as Spain and Greece, Europeans are heading north to find ‘coolcations,’ with fewer tourists

  • AFP, TROLLSTIGEN, Norway
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  Far from her home in the tourist hot spot of Tenerife, Cati Padilla is one of the growing number of travelers escaping heat waves for cooler holidays in Nordic countries.

  Countries such as Norway and Sweden in northern Europe are promoting “coolcations” to attract visitors to their temperate climates.

  Why leave the Canaries in summer?

  

  A man rides on a swing at a viewing point in Voss, Norway, on Aug. 8, 2022.

  Photo: AP

  “To escape the heat,” Padilla said, while on vacation with her friends.

  “Norway attracted our attention a long time ago because of the green landscape, the mountains and the ice,” said the civil servant in her 50s on the so-called “troll path,” a serpentine mountain route toward the fjords.

  Last year, foreign overnight stays rose by 22 percent in Norway and 11 percent in Sweden, official statistics showed, mainly driven by the end of COVID-19-related restrictions in 2022 and a slump in Scandinavian currencies.

  However, a survey in Germany for the state-owned tourism marketing company Visit Sweden also found that two out of five people plan to change their travel habits due to the southern European heat, opting for different seasons or cooler destinations.

  “Coolcation is not just about the weather,” Visit Sweden CEO Susanne Andersson said. “It’s about traveling to places where it’s a little bit cooler both in the weather, but also cooler in the sense of not that many people.”

  For some people, gone are the overcrowded Mediterranean beaches and heat waves causing forest fires and the partial closure of the Acropolis in the Greek capital last month.

  Nowadays, many prefer to take a dip in a lake or a fjord, or fill their lungs with fresh air on a mountain hike in relative isolation.

  When British tourist Pam disembarked from a cruise ship on the majestic Geirangerfjord, a UNESCO World Heritage site, she expected to find cool weather. Instead, she found herself in sandals and a T-shirt, rather than the raincoat and woolen clothes she packed.

  “It’s been wonderful,” the Lichfield, England, resident said. “It’s still not that hot that you can’t walk.”

  “It just does not interest me now to sit on a sunbed, read a book, get up, go and have something to eat and come back to the sunbed. I’d rather visit places, find the history and just look at beautiful places,” she said.

  The frequency and intensity of extreme heat events and the duration of heat waves have “almost certainly” increased since 1950 and would continue to do so with global warming, UN climate experts say.

  By 2050, half of Europe’s population could face high or very high risk heat stress in summer, with heat-related deaths potentially doubling or tripling with temperature rises of 1.5°C to 3°C.

  “Spain is a no. Greece is a no,” 74-year-old French pensioner Gerard Grollier said, as he disembarked from a coach in Geiranger village in western Norway.

  “The climate is much more pleasant,” his daughter, Virginie, a financial adviser, said of why they traveled to Norway. “We have not protected our planet, and now that is impacting tourism.”

  The capital of Lapland in northern Finland, Rovaniemi, recorded a 29 percent rise in overnight stays last year.

  “You can feel the ‘coolcation’ here, the trend started years ago, but it has increased with the hot summers in southern and central Europe,” said Sanna Karkkainen, who promotes tourism in Rovaniemi.

  The coolcation influx has its issues, including a surge in Airbnb Inc properties and unruly tourists.

  “Our main concern is to have too many people at the same time,” said Jan Ove Tryggestad, a former mayor of the Norwegian village Hellesylt, where a cruise ship carrying 6,000 passengers and 2,000 crew members had just docked.

  “It’s a small village here. In Hellesylt, there are between 280 to 300 winter inhabitants. Obviously it’s a bit of a culture shock when suddenly a small town, by European standards, turns up,” he added. “But we adapt.”
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