Autumn travel boom: Why off-season holidays in Europe and the US are surging

Cinque Terre, Italy, in thermal layers. Ireland in ceaseless rain.

For decades, I restricted most of my European travels to autumn because, whatever the weather, I enjoyed the feeling of having the hotel, trail, restaurant or cathedral — well, maybe not the Duomo in Florence — to myself.

But I won’t be alone later this year.

From resort towns in Europe to popular summer destinations in the United States, places once emptied by October are now brimming with guests. Booking.com reported notable growth in searches for traditional beach trips such as the Hamptons — up 78 per cent year-on-year in September and 45 per cent in October — and Cape Cod. Searches for rooms in Dublin are up 35 per cent in the autumn over summer, according to Expedia, and Virtuoso, a consortium of high-end travel agencies, says that autumn bookings have climbed 30 per cent this year.

At Fairmont hotels in the US, Canada and the Caribbean, occupancy in the shoulder seasons — autumn and spring — has nearly doubled since 2019.

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Omer Acar, the CEO of Raffles and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, credited remote work, the boom in music and event travel, and “guests seeking to travel based on their passions as opposed to seasonality”.

Autumn’s surge owes some credit to the broader boom in travel. In 2024, 1.4 billion people travelled internationally, up from 673 million in 2000, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council.

With more of them seeking better access and fewer crowds, “the off-season is now its own season”, said Jared Sternberg, the president and founder of Gondwana Ecotours, which offers nature-focused tours.

Growth, of course, diminishes the deals that were once the reward for bundling up for walks on the beach in Cannes rather than stripping down for a swim. Dollar Flight Club, a platform for sourcing sale airfares, found that autumn prices for European flights had been rising since 2022. In Portland, Maine, the Canopy by Hilton Portland Waterfront hotel offers October rates within $US50 of those for peak season in July and August. At Envoyage, a network of travel agencies, advisers have sold Rhine River cruises from October through December at prices on par with or even higher than those charged May through September.

“Autumn has become the new summer in Newport,” said Anney Jasinski, the director of marketing and communications at the Chanler at Cliff Walk hotel in Newport, Rhode Island, where room bookings doubled from 2023 to 2024 for September and October.

In some destinations, climate change has encouraged autumn travel by extending milder weather. In the French Riviera, September — when highs average in the mid-20s — is now as busy as August. This year, the luxury cruise line Silversea announced year-round sailings in the Mediterranean. And in the Italian Alps, with diminished early snows, the Grand Hotel Courmayeur Mont Blanc will remain open this autumn for the first time, rather than closing in mid-September and reopening in December for the ski season.

Dry conditions are “effectively extending the autumn season,” said Chiara Borghi, the marketing manager at R Collection Hotels, which runs the resort.

Travellers escaping overheated homelands have driven autumn bookings at Nimmo Bay in the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia. Originally a summer-only fishing lodge, the resort has transitioned over the past decade to a six-month season, with wildlife watching, paddling, and culinary and wellness offerings alongside fly-fishing for coho salmon, with no autumn discounts.

“Nimmo Bay recognises that the fall has its own special magic and appeal, and we have not felt the need to discount the rate for guests from around the world to agree with that,” Nimmo Bay owner Fraser Murray said.

The fallout from overtourism — including shoulder-to-shoulder summer crowds in places like Venice and Dubrovnik, Croatia, and anti-tourism protests in Spain — has pushed some travellers to delay departures to later in the year.

To ease the pressure, sustainability-minded operators like Intrepid Travel have championed the shoulder season — its autumn bookings in Italy are up more than 25 per cent this year — and introduced trips to lesser travelled destinations such as Uzbekistan and Romania.

While taking extended holidays during back-to-school season remains a challenge for many families, travel industry experts credit the shift in post-pandemic work patterns, including more flexible work-from-anywhere policies, for introducing travellers to the joys of autumn trips.

“Travellers are no longer bound by school calendars or 9-to-5 routines,” said Melissa Krueger, the CEO of Classic Vacations, a travel agency based in California. “They also want more meaningful trips — harvest festivals, culinary events, wildlife encounters — that don’t follow a summer-only mindset.”

In the Alentejo region of Portugal, autumn’s traffic rivals summer’s, driven by grape harvests, olive oil pressings and mushroom foraging.

Growing awareness of lesser known natural phenomena, such as elk rutting in the American West and coral spawning in the southern Caribbean, has contributed to autumn’s spike. Alaska’s fat bear competition in Katmai National Park has grown so popular that one outfitter is offering a series of late September trips to photograph the telegenic grizzlies bulking up on autumn salmon runs, even though the park’s lodge closes September 18 and seeing the bears requires a daily floatplane trip.

Still, people travel for myriad reasons — say, a desired museum visit or spa splurge — that have nothing to do with the weather, so why not pursue them (if you can) when the hassles are fewer? In Kennebunkport, Maine, guests of the Nonantum Resort can now sequester themselves in a floating sauna on the Kennebunk River, which has boosted autumn bookings before the resort’s seasonal closure in December.

In the Colorado Rockies, Aspen has lost about 30 days of skiing since 1980 to climate change. But with the exception of a few weeks pre- and post-ski season, Aspen is perpetually busy thanks to events, heat-fleeing visitors and savvy marketing.

“You want to run a business year-round,” said Dave Tanner, the CEO of Aspen One, the parent company of the ski area and other ventures. “Nobody wants to be slow from a profit and management perspective.”

Getting visitors to come at off-peak times often requires new incentives. Opened in 2011 on a May-to-October schedule, Brush Creek Ranch — which raises Wagyu cattle and offers 89 rooms on 30,000 acres in Saratoga, Wyoming — began expanding its season in 2018 and has added classes in cooking, cheese-making and mixology, none of which depend on weather. Demand has been strong enough that this year, for the first time, it will remain open from October to December.

“We knew we had to make the ranch sustainable,” executive vice-president and chief operating officer Mike Williams said.

Supporting workers with steady employment should also benefit patrons with more seasoned service. On the East End of Long Island in New York, North Fork Table Inn was more profitable last October than it was in July after the restaurant and four-room hotel expanded from a summer schedule. “By offering more year-round employment, we’ve attracted more local staff, reducing housing needs and building a reliable core team,” chef and owner John Fraser said.

This year, travel’s growing autumn frenzy has pushed my Europe visit beyond October to the greyer month of November.

“October is no longer a secret whispered among in-the-know travellers,” said Annarita Aprea, the director of sales and marketing at the Casa Angelina hotel on the thronged Amalfi Coast in Italy, where the cognoscenti have traded summer stays for autumn ones. “It has confidently taken its place as the crown jewel of the year.”