The long British summer break is facing an unlikely critic: one of the travel industry's own. Julia Lo Bue-Said, chief executive of the Advantage Travel Partnership, has renewed calls to shorten the traditional six-week school holiday, arguing it is badly out of step with modern family life and with what summer in Europe has become.
Her argument is straightforward. Squeezing millions of families into the same six weeks drives prices up sharply and piles pressure on airports, airlines, resorts and destinations all at once. On top of that, July and August are getting hotter across Europe, making the peak window less comfortable for holidaymakers anyway. Spreading demand more evenly, she says, would be better for children, parents, teachers and anyone else forced to travel inside the school holidays.
The proposal is concrete, not just grumbling. Advantage, working with the UK Outbound Travel Group, is asking local councils to move two weeks out of the summer break and redistribute them across the existing October and February half-terms. That would give families four realistic windows to holiday in rather than one crowded one.
There is a wider backdrop: British appetite for travel shows no sign of slowing. Figures from the Civil Aviation Authority show 142 million passengers passed through UK airports in the first half of 2026, despite rising costs, extreme heat at popular destinations and fears of delays linked to the EU's entry-exit system. Demand is high, and the current calendar funnels almost all of the family share of it into a few expensive, sweltering weeks.
For parents, the stakes are real. Taking children out of school in England for unauthorised term-time leave currently means an £80 fine per parent, per child, and schools are required to consider a fine once a child has missed ten or more sessions — five days — without permission. That rule is exactly why term-time holidays are largely off the table for most families, and why the peak six weeks carry such a premium.
Nothing changes overnight here — altering the school year would need council and government buy-in, and similar calls have surfaced before without reform. But the story matters for anyone booking a family trip. It signals that the industry itself sees the July-August model as unsustainable, and in the meantime it is a nudge to consider the shoulder windows: late May half-term, October half-term or even February can mean cooler weather, thinner crowds and noticeably lower prices. Until the calendar shifts, the practical way to dodge the squeeze is to dodge the peak yourself.