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A travel expert has renewed calls for the school summer holidays to be shortened to reduce pressure on families and travel infrastructure.
Julia Lo Bue-Said, chief executive of the industry consortium Advantage Travel Partnership, called the traditional six-week summer holiday “out of step” with the travel habits of today.
“It concentrates millions of families into the same six weeks, pushing up prices and putting huge pressure on airports, airlines, resorts and destinations,” said Bue-Said.
She added: “At the same time, European summers are getting hotter, making July and August increasingly challenging for holidaymakers. We need to start thinking differently about when families take their holidays.”
The Advantage Travel Partnership, in partnership with UK Outbound Travel Group, is asking local councils for two weeks of the summer break to be redistributed across October and February half-terms to ease peak-season pressure.
The call comes as new figures from Advantage’s 2026 end-of-summer trading update show that Britons remain determined to travel, despite rising costs, extreme temperatures and the risk of entry-exit system delays.
Some 142 million passengers travelled through UK airports in the first half of 2026, according to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
Last year, Bue-Said told The Independent’s travel podcast that it would be “better for children, better for their wellbeing, better for families, better for teachers, better for anyone that’s constrained with having to go during the school holidays”.
Parents in England face a fine of £80 per parent, per child when taking children out of school for unauthorised term-time absences.
The government says: “All schools are required to consider a fine when a child has missed 10 or more sessions (five days) for unauthorised reasons.”
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