Does anyone know of a web site, e.g., that shows the high/shoulder/low seasons for various European (or world) destinations? Would be a valuable tool for planning future trips -- thank you!

I work in the European villa/apartment rental industry and for country vacation rentals (at least in France, Italy, Spain and Portugal) high is July/August, mid is June/September and low is all other months except in some very popular destinations like Provence where some owners charge April/May and sometimes October as mid. Also Xmas/New Years/Easter and any other local holidays might be at a higher rate too. In city apartments, generally speaking, the rates tend to be the same year round except sometimes in the very OFF months like November/Dec/Jan/Feb (excluding Xmas/New Year). I can't speak for hotels and airfare -- this is just to give you a general rule of thumb for the vacation rental industry and of course exceptions exist.

oh, and lest I get scolded for not answering the original question -- I forgot to say that I don't believe there is one general chart for all of Europe or for all aspects of travel for that matter(airfare/hotel/vacation rental/car rental, etc..) I just tried to tell you what I know about in case you were thinking of renting vacation properties vs. staying in hotel rooms.

nyse, we go to Rome & Venice the 1st 2 weeks in Nov. & find a big difference in hotel/apt. prices as compared to the last week in Oct. I was amazed that some places for the last week of Oct. were 50 Euros per nite higher for just 1 week difference!

Like Bianca, I also do not know of any place this info is available. Maybe someone else will have the info.

Julie

Bianca1975 has the experience. I only have observations of seeing the "high" rates beginning to bleed into the formerly "mid/shoulder" months and "low season" reduced to just a few winter weeks. I also don't know of a website providing definitive info on this subject.

Julie, Jean &Bianca -- thank you for your responses. So much travel info is readily available (like the Buzz feature on Kayak) that I hoped someone had charted these seasons. I do appreciate the time you took to answer and perhaps someday there'll be a site!

nyse, want some extra money? Maybe fate is calling you - develop such a site with other travel info & make money on the ads!

Julie

A few years ago I went to Florence and Venice in July and found prices considerably lower than those posted for the same hotels for May/June/Sept. When I asked the hotel staff in both places, they said that actually July August were "shoulder" seasons there. I was quite surprised but I've since seen the same thing for some other places. In Sicily another year I was looking at hotels for the last week in July, first week in August and prices jumped by 50% or more on August 1st. So I think that while you can have "rule of thumb" that says July and August are high season (and it certainly is for airfare), it won't always hold true for hotels/crowds.

Yes, Isabel -- hotels definitely have different seasons and much of this depends on if the hotel has A/C or not, among numerous other factors. The reason for July/August being high for vacation property rentals is because apartments/houses/villas are extremely attractive to family groups and family groups generaly travel during July/August because of school schedules. Owners unfortunately take advantage of this circumstance. On the other hand, hotels have a broader range of clientele, including couples without children, retired folk, or older couples who have grown children and can travel any time of the year. And regarding city apartment rentals vs. country rentals, they typically have a year-round rate, with some exceptions of course depending on each individual owner. From my understanding, hotels rate schedules/seasons are completely different.

On La Palma, in the Canary Islands, for cottage rentals the winter months (Nov-Feb) are the high season, July, August are mid and the rest tend to be low. Yet they count as Europe - so you can see how complicated a chart would need to be.
Good idea though if someone can design one!