Some wealthy travelers are replacing their hot summer trips with ‘coolcations’

Likely, no vacationer wants to spend their precious summer break wading through sweltering heat waves and throngs of sweaty crowds.

Thus, the growing preference for “coolcations” — a portmanteau of “cool” and “vacations” — is born. And with it, a 44% increase in bookings to the milder-weathered destinations of northern Europe and Canada from the summer of 2023 to 2024, according to luxury travel agency Virtuoso.

Move aside, wet, hot American summer. Now, it’s all about cold Finnish summers.

Wealthy travelers are seeking out chill summers

Misty Belles, Virtuoso’s vice president of global public relations, attributed the trend to two global warming-related factors: the increasing intensity of heat waves and recent wildfires in Maui, Hawaii, Greece, and Spain.

The latter “really rattled” people,” she told BI.

Europe, as a whole, endured a sweltering summer. However, some western European countries — specifically Iceland, Ireland, and parts of the UK and Norway — experienced cooler-than-average summers.

The “Scandi style” fashion aesthetic, inspired by Copenhagen and Stockholm’s minimalist street style, has retained its grip on #FashionTok.

Now, the public’s love of Scandinavia is bleeding into travel, too.

Melissa Biggs Bradley, CEO of luxury travel agency and media company Indagare, told BI in an email that more of the company’s clients have been “gravitating north” to major Nordic cities.

For those who prefer less urban trips, she called out the “great restaurants and beautiful beaches” of the Stockholm archipelago and the “dramatic landscapes” of the Faroe Islands and Norway’s fjords.

Norway’s upstairs neighbor, Finland, also piqued the interest of Virtuoso’s clients this summer — to the tune of a 150% balloon in bookings. “That’s not someplace we were typically sending clients,” Belles said.

The world’s happiest country accommodated about 89,700 US travelers from June through August, a 7.7% increase from 2023.

Even United Airlines is riding the coolcations trend, too. In October, the company announced it would launch its first summer route from New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International to Nuuk, Greenland’s soon-to-be-completed international airport, in June 2025.

“The savvy traveler has been to Paris, Rome, and Madrid so many times that they’re looking for something different,” Patrick Quayle, United Airlines’ SVP of global network planning and alliances, told reporters at the time. “Our nonstop flights to Greenland will provide new access to the world’s most northern capital and gateway to Arctic adventures and midnight sun.”