Extreme Heat Disrupted 72% of Travelers’ Summer Trips. Here’s Where They’re Going Instead.

Summer vacation has a formula. Beaches, warm weather, sunshine. The whole point of the trip is to be outside.

But that formula is breaking down.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac is forecasting hotter-than-normal temperatures across much of North America this year, and AccuWeather points to a developing El Niño pattern that will drive warmer and more volatile conditions through the rest of the season. Travelers are already feeling it.

In a survey of 1,038 U.S. leisure travelers, 72% said extreme heat disrupted a past summer trip. For some, that meant canceling plans. For others, it meant spending more than they budgeted or time recovering indoors.

More people are changing where and when they travel, and reconsidering how much they’re willing to spend to stay comfortable.

Extreme Heat Is Already Disrupting Trips, Not Just Budgets

Nearly 3 in 4 travelers said heat disrupted a past trip. But what that actually looked like varies more than the number suggests.

The most consequential losses were the plans themselves. 29% of travelers skipped or canceled an outdoor activity they’d already scheduled. Another 20% cut a trip short or left a destination earlier than they wanted. 

The physical toll explains a lot of those cancellations. 38% of travelers reported feeling unwell on a past summer trip due to factors like heat exhaustion or dehydration. After all, nobody is going to finish a hike after their head starts pounding or stay another day when they’ve spent the last one recovering indoors.  

Solo travelers got hit hardest. 46% of those who typically travel alone reported feeling physically unwell, higher than the average. It’s easy to push past your limits without a travel partner around to notice.

Then there’s the money. 42% of travelers spent more than they expected trying to stay cool, and families felt it hardest: people who typically travel with children were far more likely to overspend on cooling (57% vs. 42% overall). Comfort stops being optional once the heat actually gets to you, whether that means paying more for a place with working air conditioning or pivoting to indoor activities like museums or shopping.

Kids need shade and breaks, and none of that is negotiable. That pressure changes what a family-friendly stay needs to include as temperatures climb, and it piles on top of the rising travel costs families are already working around as they choose where to go.

Most Travelers Aren’t Complaining About the Heat, They’re Just Going Somewhere Else

Almost half of travelers surveyed (45%) say heat has always factored into their planning, and another 26% say it matters more this year than it used to.

Among travelers making changes, the when and where are the main points of emphasis. 53% would change the timing of a trip to avoid the hottest months. 44% would pick an entirely different destination to dodge the heat.

This motivation is also driving when and what people book. 35% are planning further in advance to lock in cooler destinations before they sell out. If cooler summer rentals start booking up the way ski season or holiday travel does, then travelers may need to make summer planning decisions earlier as well. 

Attitudes toward heat are shifting, too, even for people who haven’t changed destinations yet. A quarter of travelers now actively steer away from destinations they know will be very hot. Another 28% factor in heat when making their activity and lodging decisions without changing the destination itself. Still, 34% say their planning hasn’t changed at all. But that also means over 6 in 10 report some kind of shift in how they think about heat. 

We also asked travelers to name the forecasted high temperature that would make them seriously reconsider or change plans. 29% put that line at 100°F or higher, and 21% said between 90°F and 94°F. That decision can play out in two different ways. Some travelers rebook while watching the extended forecast for a trip that’s still weeks away. Others are already there when a heat dome parks over the region, which can lead to cancellations and early departures.

As triple-digit days edge into cities that have spent decades without them, the share of travelers reconsidering their plans is likely to grow. A 100-degree tolerance sounds high until you look at where those days are happening. Triple-digit highs have become more common across major U.S. cities, including places that rarely saw them before. New York City, for example, hit the triple digits for the first time in over a decade in July 2026. 

Families are also quick to adjust plans. Travelers with children are more likely to change trip timing (59%) and more likely to switch to lodging with better cooling (45%). That might mean paying more for a rental with a pool and a shaded patio, giving the kids somewhere to go when the afternoon heat peaks.

Older travelers aren’t as fazed, though. Among people 62 and up, 41% say their planning hasn’t changed at all, compared to 22% of travelers ages 18 to 29. The likely reason is that they are less reactive because they’ve been affected less. Only 14% of travelers aged 18-29 say heat has never disrupted a trip, compared with 49% of those 62 and older.

More Than a Quarter of Travelers Are Leaving Miami and Las Vegas Behind for Cooler Destinations

When asked which popular U.S. summer destinations they’ve avoided or would reconsider because of heat, travelers most often named Miami (27%), Las Vegas (26%), and Phoenix/Scottsdale (25%). 

Las Vegas and Phoenix deliver dry desert heat with little relief. Phoenix averages 111 days a year at 100°F or hotter, and Las Vegas saw 77 such days in 2025, most of which occur in July and August. Miami runs cooler, but a 90°F day there regularly produces a forecasted heat index up to 105°F once humidity is factored in.

To beat the heat, travelers are turning toward water and altitude, which work as nature’s air conditioning. Coastal destinations with ocean breezes were the top alternative (43%), followed by mountains and higher-elevation spots (35%), lakes and inland water (34%), and national parks or protected wilderness (28%).

Data from Fora backs up what travelers told us: New Hampshire’s White Mountains saw bookings nearly double this summer, with average trip length stretching from four days to sixteen, and South Dakota and North Dakota ranked among the five fastest-growing Midwest states for summer travel, driven by the Black Hills and Badlands National Park.

Cities hold heat in a way open country doesn’t. The EPA estimates that urban areas run 1 to 7°F hotter than surrounding areas during the day. Pavement and buildings absorb heat and release it slowly, which helps explain why natural landscapes are pulling ahead of built environments in traveler preference.

Specific regions surfaced, too. Northern states like Michigan and Maine polled at 26%, the Pacific Northwest was 24%, Canada landed at 21%, and 22% of travelers said they’d look outside of North America entirely for somewhere cooler. 

The same Fora data also shows Canadian bookings up 119% year over year, with Vancouver, Toronto, and Banff all climbing more than 100%, while cool-climate cities in Northern Europe are seeing similar momentum, led by Oslo (up 154%) and Helsinki (up 124%).

Plenty of those options are affordable travel destinations, which helps keep the cost of a cooler trip in check.

What Travelers Will Trade Off to Stay Cool

Over 7 in 10 travelers will give something up for the comfort of a cooler destination. 32% would travel farther from home, 25% would accept fewer tourist amenities, 23% would pay more for lodging, and another 23% would give up dining and nightlife options. 

Among those open to paying more for accommodations, 30% would go $51–$100 higher per night. But the ceiling is firm. 82% of that group wouldn’t go past an extra $100. 

51% of travelers had never heard the term “coolcation” before this survey, proof that the behavior is outpacing the vocabulary for it.

What’s more interesting is how people feel about all this. Rearranging vacation plans around weather you can’t control should be frustrating, but only 12% described themselves that way. Meanwhile, 24% said the shift pushed them toward places they’d never have considered, and 22% are now excited about and prefer cooler destinations to the warm-weather trips they used to default to.

More Than Half of Travelers Have Been Burned by a Stay That Wasn’t as Cool as Advertised

Picking the right region is only part of the problem. The stay itself can undercut the destination, no matter how well chosen it was. 53% of travelers have booked a place to stay that turned out hotter than the property listing suggested, and 21% have had this happen more than once. That’s a real risk for travelers who are already gravitating toward shorter, lower-effort getaways. 

That issue becomes more common the farther travelers go. While more than 9 out of 10 U.S. homes have air conditioning, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, that number falls to roughly 23% across Europe, according to the International Energy Agency. American travelers often arrive with expectations that many European rentals just can’t meet.  

This same listing-accuracy problem shows up domestically in cooler-region rentals. For example, older housing in Maine or coastal Oregon often lacks air conditioning entirely because nobody needed it. 

Partial cooling also causes its own problems, since a place with air conditioning in the bedrooms and none in the living room is technically air-conditioned but practically unusable during a hot day.

What Travelers Actually Prioritize

People don’t forget getting stuck in a stuffy rental, which explains why air conditioning still ranks as the top accommodation priority for cooler destinations (49%). They’ve already chosen somewhere cooler but still want the backup.

Walkability (33%) and avoiding crowds and heavy tourism (32%) follow, and together these describe a fairly specific ideal in between. 

But cool-weather lodging like cabins, mountain houses, and lake rentals tend to sit well outside town. Travelers don’t want total isolation or the crowded main street. They want to be close enough to walk to a coffee shop or grocery store, but far enough that it doesn’t feel like a tourist trap.

When the Heat Keeps Rising, So Does the Pressure to Plan Smarter

Temperatures aren’t rising fast enough yet to cancel summer travel altogether, but they are warming up enough to reshape travelers’ plans.

But that adaptability has a shelf life. It’s easier to find an upside when cooler destinations still feel like a discovery. If they get more crowded and expensive while hot ones get hotter, the trade-offs won’t feel optional anymore.

For travelers making these adjustments, where you stay is the decision that makes or breaks the trip. That starts with budgeting for it properly. Vogo helps travelers search and compare listings by amenity and location, making it easier to find a stay that’s actually built for a cooler destination rather than just marketed as one.

Methodology

The survey was conducted by Centiment for Vogo. The survey was fielded between July 10, 2026, and July 15, 2026. The results are based on 1,038 completed responses from U.S. adults aged 18+ who have taken a leisure trip with an overnight stay in the past 12 months or plan to do so in the next 12 months. Data is unweighted, and the margin of error is approximately +/-3% for the overall sample with a 95% confidence level.

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External Sources

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3. Punishing heat wave hits eastern US, with a preview of what’s to come. (2026, July). https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/01/climate/heat-waves-europe-us-el-nino-warming.
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