Record heat, crowds fuel the season’s boom in international travel

Because of the heat, the crowds and the high prices, many US tourists are finding no time for international travel – and airlines and hotels are fighting for the sunset.

Flights to Europe’s single-season destinations now start when there is still snow on the ground in the US and wrap up when the leaves fall from the trees, if at all, instead of following the usual spring to late summer travel seasons.

For example, American Airlines‘ flight to Edinburgh, Scotland, from New York began in March. United Airlines‘ nonstop route to Palermo, Sicily from Newark, New Jersey, will end in December as well Delta Air Lines‘ service to Rome from Minneapolis, Minnesota, will begin in January, months later than in previous years.

With this year’s increase in jet fuel expected to take $100 billion from airline profits this year, according to the International Air Transport Association, it’s important for the industry to expand travel options that attract high-spending customers.

Investors are excited that airlines can take on fuel from earlier this year after overhauling unprofitable or marginally unprofitable planes and airline executives say strong demand has helped them pass some – but not all – of those costs.

Shares of Delta and United, the two most profitable US airlines, have each hit record highs in recent weeks, and American shares hit an 18-month high. Airlines begin reporting second-quarter results and providing third-quarter updates this month, with Delta starting the season on Friday.

Industry executives told CNBC that international holiday seasons used to be highly defined. New trends are forcing them to tear up decades-old playbooks.

“It used to be a lot lumpier. There was a lot: a good season, a bad season,” Delta President Peter Carter said in an interview. “There are so many places to go in Europe all year round and it’s such an amazing experience, that’s why we’re seeing such good demand in Europe.”

That need is redefined when airlines make money.

“We’ve seen this big, what I would call, interseasonal — the shoulder season meets the full season,” Patrick Quayle, United Airlines‘ the carrier’s senior vice president of network design said in an interview last month.

Shoulder season refers to the period between a destination’s peak tourist season and its off season.

Airlines try to extend the season as much as possible to maximize profits.

International flights to Europe often carry more premium seats like lie-flat pods than the smaller jets used for domestic flights — and airlines plan to expand those options further. Business class fares on some of those routes can cost $10,000 round trip instead of less than half that on a domestic route.

Overall airfares are higher this year compared to last as airlines try to pass on their rising costs to customers as much as possible, but there are signs that prices are leveling off, especially as the industry looks to the peak summer travel season in July to pass.

For example, flights between the US and Athens, Greece, on June 22 would cost $988 round trip, up from $810 a year ago but down from $1,350 two months ago, according to flight tracking site Kayak.

The increase in shoulder season and irregular travel forces Delta to rethink its maintenance and staffing plans, said Jeff Arinder, Delta’s vice president of global network planning.

“We will never give airplanes to maintenance hangers, if we can avoid it, in the summer … because that’s where we make all the money,” he told CNBC. “Now we are doing a lot of repairs during the summer because we want to save those planes in the fall.”

He said Delta is trying to “blur our season as much as possible.”

The latest challenge to a typical summer European tour has been the latest deadly heat wave.

Towards the end of June, locals and tourists alike faced dangerous temperatures across Europe, where the weather was less common. Fog stations were set up from Warsaw, Poland, to Rome. The Paris LGBTQ+ Pride march was postponed, among other events, and public drinking was briefly banned in the city.

Residents of many European cities, such as Barcelona, ​​Spain, and Venice, Italy have also been expressing concerns about congestion during the peak summer months and beyond. Countries across Europe have been bringing in record numbers of tourists.

But it’s not just an aversion to heat and crowds that leads to changing travel patterns.

For younger generations, flexible work policies help some consumers, even those with children, take trips outside of spring and summer. Baby Boomers, on the other hand, are armed with plenty of money and plenty of time, giving them more travel flexibility.

“Delta’s target area tends to be a little older and a little richer,” Arinder said.

United are pushing the limits of the off-season.

It has extended its nonstop flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Palermo, Sicily, until Dec. 16, rather than ending in September, with Boeing 767s.

Sicily has long been marketed as a summer destination.

Daytime highs can regularly reach 90 degrees Fahrenheit along the coast with little, if any, rain in July. In December, however, highs sometimes do not touch 60 degrees on the Italian island and rain is more likely.

As hotel rates drop and crowds at major attractions drop in the winter, United is betting that travelers will fill the three-times-a-week service even without perfect summer weather.

“I don’t think that’s a test. I think it’s a really safe bet,” United’s Quayle said.

Many beach hotels also close during the winter months. The Four Seasons’ San Domenico Palace, in Taormina, Sicily, where the second season of HBO’s “White Lotus” was shot, will be closed from mid-November to early spring, for example.

However, manager Imelda Shllaku told CNBC that over the past four years the hotel has had “a dramatic increase in bookings from US guests” in March, April, October and November.

“High-end travelers are increasingly looking for experiences with real cultural value, and Sicily’s shoulder season is best suited to deliver,” he said by email, pointing to Noto’s backcountry tours in southeast Sicily and overnight trips to Mount Etna. The hotel will reopen on March 1, said a spokesperson for the hotel.

Delta plans to extend its flights from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Catania, on the east coast of Sicily, until Jan. 3, compared to Oct. 24 last year. It also plans to restart the route on March 8, 2027. This year, it started the route on May 1 and May 21 in 2025.

United and Delta are not alone, as airlines across the board redeploy some of their larger aircraft to maintain service to Europe year-round or early in the season.

“When airlines are looking to buy planes, they have to think ‘How are we going to use this plane year-round because it’s an expensive machine,'” said Brett Snyder, founder of the Cranky Flier blog and Cranky Concierge travel company. “They know in the summer they won’t have a problem sending these people to Europe. Now they can extend that until the shoulder season.”

Based in Seattle Alaska Airlineswhich just launched its first transatlantic service this year to London, Rome and Reykjavík, Iceland, remembers this. President and Chief Financial Officer Shane Tackett told CNBC that travelers are becoming more flexible.

“Many people want to see the same places… [and that] it makes a lot more sense that those seasons would start to spread out,” he said. “Maybe when I was growing up, my parents wouldn’t even think about taking me out of school in September, and I think maybe the parents were like, ‘Yeah, let’s go somewhere fun, and you’ll catch school when you come back.'”

American Airlineson the other hand, it extends some of the seasons of US transatlantic travel.

October “isn’t as strong as June or July for Europe, but it’s becoming a big month for us,” said Brian Znotins, the carrier’s senior vice president of network planning.

But American doesn’t want to push airlines too far away from their proven track record of winter ski-and-sun vacationers, he said.

“I will not be cut down by words: January and February are still months of nothingness. I would hate for someone to come forward and say that they are good months, they are not better than before,” he said.

Some travelers split the difference.

Atul Mehta, a financial executive based in Chicago, said he is taking his family to Portugal this summer just before school starts, but said that when he visited his family in Bahrain in the winter “we took it out of school.”