For decades, the British summer holiday has carried one basic assumption: if you want reliable sun, you leave the UK. Spain, Greece, Turkey, Portugal and Italy have offered what Britain could not always guarantee: warmth, blue skies and the feeling of a proper summer break.

But climate change is beginning to alter the financial logic of that decision. This does not mean the UK should celebrate warmer summers. Heat brings serious risks: drought, wildfire, water stress, pressure on health services and damage to infrastructure.

Yet for households facing higher living costs, expensive travel and growing awareness of carbon emissions, the summer holiday is becoming more than a lifestyle choice. It is becoming a household finance decision, a regional economic decision and a climate-risk decision.

The warning signs are now difficult to ignore. The Met Office confirmed that summer 2025 was the UK’s warmest on record, with a mean temperature of 16.10°C between June and August. It is also estimated that a summer as hot or hotter than 2025 is now around 70 times more likely because of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. This does not mean every British summer will be hot or dry. But it does mean that warm-weather tourism at home is becoming more plausible than it was for previous generations.

The financial scale of outbound tourism is substantial. According to the Office for National Statistics, UK residents made an estimated 94.6 million visits abroad in 2024 and spent about £78.6 billion overseas. Spain alone received an estimated 17.8 million visits from residents of Great Britain in........

© The Conversation