👉 The destination isn’t chosen for how beautiful it is anymore, but for how cool it stays.
📘 What are Coolcations?
Coolcations are a travel trend in which guests choose their holiday destination by prioritising cool or temperate climates over traditionally hot destinations, driven by increasingly intense summer heatwaves. The term blends “cool” and “vacation”.
Key features:
- Climate becomes the primary decision-making factor, ahead of other attributes such as beaches, cultural heritage or nightlife.
- It particularly benefits mountain destinations, Northern European regions, mild coastal cities, or areas with moderate temperatures at the height of summer.
- It disadvantages traditional Mediterranean and sun-and-beach destinations, which see part of their demand shift elsewhere during the hottest months.
- It’s often accompanied by a reshuffling of travel calendars: some guests bring forward or push back their stay in hot destinations towards shoulder season, seeking milder temperatures.
- It’s a trend driven by climate change and by travellers’ growing sensitivity to thermal comfort and wellbeing during their holidays.
For Revenue Management, coolcations aren’t just a marketing buzzword: they represent real shifts in the seasonal demand curve and in a hotel’s comp set, as new “competing” destinations emerge that weren’t previously considered direct alternatives.
✅ Why do Coolcations matter?
- They reshape traditional seasonality, extending or shifting high season towards months with more moderate temperatures.
- They widen a hotel’s comp set, bringing in cool-climate destinations that previously weren’t competing for the same guest.
- They require adjusting forecasts and pricing strategy in anticipation of weaker demand during peak heat months in traditionally hot holiday destinations.
- They open a growth opportunity for hotels in cool or temperate destinations, which can capture demand that previously never reached them during high season.
- They force a rethink of segmentation mix and marketing campaigns, positioning thermal comfort as a selling point.
- They reinforce the need for flexible, data-driven Revenue Management, capable of spotting shifts in traveller behaviour before they show up in pickup.
💡 Practical example
A hotel in a traditional Mediterranean destination notices that, over recent summers, July and August pickup is growing more slowly than usual, while June and September are gaining share of demand. After analysing the comp set, the Revenue Manager finds that part of the hotel’s regular clientele is now choosing mountain or Northern European destinations during the most intense heatwaves.
In response, the hotel adjusts its pricing strategy to encourage June and September bookings, strengthens its air-conditioned spaces and shaded areas, and launches a marketing campaign built around “pleasant weather outside peak heat hours” — while keeping a close eye on emerging cool-climate destinations as part of its expanded comp set.
🔄 Disambiguation
Coolcations vs Staycation: A staycation prioritises geographic proximity (staying close to home); coolcations prioritise climate, and can involve travelling long distances in search of cooler temperatures.
Coolcations vs Low season: Low season is a period of weaker demand driven by structural factors (calendar, holidays, typical climate); coolcations are a shift in traveller behaviour that can actually redefine what counts as high and low season for a destination.
Coolcations vs Comp Set: The comp set is the group of hotels and destinations a property regularly competes with; coolcations widen that comp set by introducing cool-climate destinations that weren’t previously seen as direct competition.
Coolcations vs Overtourism: Overtourism describes a destination becoming overcrowded due to excess demand; coolcations, by contrast, describe demand shifting towards cooler destinations, which can either ease overtourism in traditional hotspots or create it in the newly favoured areas.
In summary: coolcations show how climate has become as decisive a travel factor as price or destination itself, forcing hotels to rethink their seasonality, their comp set and their Revenue Management strategy for a traveller increasingly driven by thermal comfort.
