Rethink... summer holidays

Rethink

Two weeks in the sun - it's the classic summer getaway. For many of us, summer holidays are something to look forward to all year.

But some of the most popular destinations for British holidaymakers are under strain. Protesters in Barcelona and Majorca have been pushing back at the number of visitors they host - even spraying them with water pistols. Locals are unhappy at being priced out of the housing market and feeling pressure on public services - but they also need tourists to support their economies.

At the same time, many destinations are experiencing increasingly hot summers, with sometimes catastrophic results. Two years ago, 20,000 tourists in Rhodes were forced to evacuate their hotels to get away from wildfires. Climate models suggest future summers will be hotter still.

So is it time to rethink how we approach the summer holiday?

Should we be considering different destinations for our holidays - swapping Mediterranean beaches for northern Europe or British destinations? Would those places be ready for more summer visitors? How can tourist destinations change to meet shifting demands? Is it time for schools to move away from the long summer break?

We'll look at the history of the beach holiday, and try and imagine what summer holidays will look like in the future. And we'll ask - what is a summer holiday for?

Presenter: Ben Ansell Producer: Lucy Burns Editor: Clare Fordham

Contributors

Sarah Stodola, author of The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit and Peril at the Beach Simon Calder, travel journalist Christos Giannakopoulos, research director, the National Observatory of Athens Rowland Rees-Evans, chair of the Wales Tourism Alliance Lee Elliot-Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter

Rethink is a BBC co-production with the Open University