About the Summit
Built entirely around the low season
Most industry events are about the season everyone already plans for. This one is about the rest of the year, and those months decide whether a destination has a year round economy or just a busy summer.
Why seasonality matters
Tourism follows waves, and those waves have consequences.
The uneven spread of visitors across the year is one of the industry's most persistent problems. It crowds destinations in the peak, empties them either side, and leaves the people who work in tourism with jobs that only exist for part of the year.
Almost every other industry event is about the season everyone already plans for. This one is about the rest of the calendar, and it is the only industry gathering built entirely around the low season.
The challenge
What seasonality actually costs
Seasonal work
Six month jobs and unstable incomes in communities that depend on tourism, and skilled people lost to other industries every year.
Strained infrastructure
Roads, water, waste and housing built for a peak that lasts weeks, and pressure on the natural environment when it arrives.
A worse visit
Crowding, queues and inflated prices in the peak, which is the version of the destination most visitors take home with them.
The cost of closing
Shutting for the winter isn’t free. Recommissioning, recruitment and retraining carry a bill that almost nobody puts a number on.
What the Summit does about it
The Summit brings the whole chain into one room, destinations and national tourism authorities, hotels and resorts, airlines and airports, cruise, tour operators, data and policy, because the low season is designed together or not at all.
Our speakers are people who have actually moved a season and are willing to share how, including what went wrong. Every session has to earn its place by helping someone design demand for a month their own business currently writes off. Three editions in, nobody needs persuading that the problem is real. The argument has already moved on from managing seasonality to designing demand, and Antalya is where that gets built.
One table, every sector
The one problem the whole industry shares
No single part of the industry can fix this alone. An airline cannot fill seats into a destination whose hotels have closed for the winter. A hotel cannot stay open without the flights. A destination cannot lengthen its season without both, plus the operators who sell it, the ports that serve it and the people willing to work it. Every one of those decisions is made by a different organisation, and they’re almost never made in the same room.
This is the event where they are. Senior people from tourism authorities, hotels and resorts, airlines, airports, cruise lines, ports, tour operators, data and policy, in one room, engaging with each other rather than presenting past each other.
Airlines compete vociferously on everything except one thing. Safety is the issue where they work together, openly, because it unites them all and nobody gains from keeping what they know to themselves. My hope is that seasonality comes to be seen the same way by tourism organisations.
Ged BrownFounder, Low Season Traveller and The Tourism Seasonality SummitThe sustainability argument
The most sustainable resort is the one already built.
Aviation is responsible for roughly 2.5 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, and closer to 4 per cent of the warming observed so far once non-carbon effects are counted. The industry is asked to account for that, and rightly so.
Buildings and construction account for around 37 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions and nearly half of all material extracted from the planet. The world adds roughly 12.7 million square metres of floor space every single day, close to the floor area of Paris every week.
- Aviation2.5%
- Buildings and construction37%
- Road, rail and shipping20%
- Other industry16%
- Energy production and refining15%
- Agriculture and everything else9.5%
Set those two figures beside each other and a question follows for tourism. Building new hotels and resorts that then stand practically empty for up to six months of the year is difficult to defend on any environmental measure. The carbon is spent the moment the concrete is poured, whether the rooms are occupied for twelve months or five.
Which makes the opposite move one of the most responsible things this industry can do. Using an asset that already exists during the months it sits underused adds no concrete, no steel and no extracted material. It’s closer to recycling than to growth. And whether a business arrives at it through sustainability or simply through sweating an asset it has already paid for, the conclusion is the same, which is rare enough to be worth building an event around.
The story so far
Four editions, each stronger than the last
Every edition has drawn more delegates than the one before, and from more parts of the industry. The programme has grown to match, from a single day in Bahrain to three in Antalya.
2024
Bahrain
The first Tourism Seasonality Summit. One day, 8 October 2024, alongside Routes World. A single day of keynotes and panels that put the question on the table: what seasonality costs a destination, and whether air connectivity can support a year-round one.
2025
Seville
The second edition, and the first in Europe. One day, 7 April 2025, alongside Routes Europe. Five hours on how European destinations navigate seasonality, and what actually changes a traveller's perception of the low season.
2026
Rimini
The third edition. A day and a half, 17 to 18 May 2026, alongside Routes Europe. Cruise joined the conversation for the first time, and the argument moved on from managing seasonality to designing demand. Closed with the third State of Tourism Seasonality report.
2027
Antalya
The fourth edition, and the longest yet. Three days, 21 to 23 April 2027, alongside Routes Europe, under the theme Designing Demand Together. Antalya is where the argument turns into things people build.
What makes this one different
Worked examples, not positions. Every practitioner session is built on something someone has actually done, with the numbers attached and the mistakes included.
You are part of the programme. Live polling, open questions and a whole-room vote. Four sessions across the three days are built on the room speaking rather than listening, and the closing hour is largely yours.
A room that can act. 200 to 250 delegates, curated rather than filled, senior enough that what’s agreed in the room can be acted upon afterwards.
The annual record. Every edition produces the State of Tourism Seasonality report, published by Low Season Traveller. It’s the full record of what was said, so what happens in Antalya is still there to read long after everyone has flown home.
The experience
Three days in Antalya
Sessions worth sitting through
Keynotes and panels from people running destinations, airlines, ports and hotels, with a hard rule against sessions that only restate the problem.
Work, not just listening
One Question Every Row on Wednesday, open questions to the three low season niche speakers on Thursday, live polling on how a good year should be measured, and an open floor to close the summit.
Time to actually talk
Breaks, lunches and an evening built for it, at the NEST Congress and Exhibition Center in Belek, alongside Routes Europe in the same city and the same week.
Who is in the room
The Summit is for the people who can change what a destination's year looks like, and the people who have to live with it.
- Destinations, DMOs and national tourism authorities
- Government and policy
- Hotels, resorts and accommodation groups
- Airlines and airports
- Cruise lines and ports
- Tour operators, OTAs and DMCs
- Data, technology and consultancy
- Academia and tourism education
- Industry associations
- Media
Tickets
Be in the room
Ticket sales open in autumn 2026, from £395. The room is capped at 200 to 250, and it’s a standalone ticket, so a Routes Europe pass won’t get you in. Leave your details and we’ll tell you the moment tickets go live.
