Cheap flights, costly choices: How extreme day trips are fuelling overtourism and climate damage

 

🌎 Budget ‘flying visits’ come at a great cost, contributing to overtourism and the climate crisis.

‘Extreme day trips’ are the latest fad, gaining momentum on social media.

The trend involves hopping on a budget flight for a day of sightseeing in Europe, packing in as much as possible like an overstuffed cabin bag. 

Enthusiasts tout these ultra mini breaks as a way to see the world while supposedly saving time and money, and a growing community of travellers regularly share their exploits to inspire others.

But extreme day trips are extremely bad news. They carry a steep environmental burden, with flying one of the largest and fastest-growing contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. And they contribute to the overtourism crisis afflicting so many European destinations.

Much like cruise liner day trips, flying visits focus on tourist hotspots: sites that saturate social media and lie within easiest reach - you can only get so far in a few hours, after all. It means extreme day trips are about as irresponsible as tourism gets.

Social media, cheap flights and short-sighted tour operators all share the blame for this deeply problematic trend. But budget doesn’t have to mean bad. 

Rather than taking a dozen day trips into Europe across the course of a year, it’s much more relaxing and rewarding to slow things down with just a couple of longer breaks. You’ll see more, because you’ll have the time to get beyond the obvious tourist hotspots, and your holiday will do more good for the place you visit.