The Shoulder Season Score
30 popular destinations ranked by the optimal week to visit — on a weather, crowd, and price tradeoff
destination.com's first proprietary index scores 30 popular destinations on their shoulder-season value: the week when the weather still works, the crowds have left, and prices have dropped below peak. Published April 2026; updated annually.
How we measured this
Each destination scored on four equal-weighted components (25 points each): weather suitability (a composite of daytime high, precipitation probability, and wind index relative to the destination's peak season); visitor-volume reduction vs the destination's peak month (from UNWTO, STR, and Cirium arrival data); average hotel ADR reduction vs peak (aggregated from Expedia and STR); and cultural-event density (festivals, harvests, and local calendar events that add value to the shoulder week). Scores are normalised to a 100-point scale per destination and rounded to the nearest whole number. Scoring runs on a 12-month rolling window; the data cited for each destination covers April 2025 through March 2026.
- UNWTO Global Tourism Dashboard — 2025 arrivals data
- STR monthly hotel occupancy + ADR by market
- Cirium air-travel dataset (flight occupancy by city-pair)
- Expedia aggregated booking data (12-month window)
- Climate normals: NOAA, Météo France, JMA, Australian BoM
- Google Trends destination-query volume
The Shoulder Season Score
| # | Name | Category | Shoulder Season Score (/100) | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lisbon, Portugal | Europe · Early October | 92 | 24°C average, 68% of peak pricing, crowds down 42%. |
| 2 | Kyoto, Japan | Asia · Mid November | 91 | Late autumn colour, 56% of peak pricing, ryokan availability restored. |
| 3 | Mexico City, Mexico | Americas · Late September | 89 | Post-rainy, pre-Day of the Dead crowds, 73% of peak pricing. |
| 4 | Crete, Greece | Europe · Mid October | 88 | Sea still 22°C, ferries reduced but running, 54% of peak pricing. |
| 5 | Cape Town, South Africa | Africa · Early November | 87 | Spring flowers at West Coast, 61% of peak pricing, wind season ending. |
| 6 | Marrakech, Morocco | Africa · Early April | 86 | Pre-Ramadan timing crucial; 25°C days, 58% of peak pricing. |
| 7 | Tokyo, Japan | Asia · Late March | 86 | Pre-cherry-blossom week, 81% of peak pricing for equivalent weather. |
| 8 | Istanbul, Turkey | Europe · Mid May | 85 | Before peak heat, 63% of peak pricing, Bosphorus clear and sailable. |
| 9 | Seville, Spain | Europe · Mid October | 85 | 26°C, tapas bars back to local rhythm, 59% of peak pricing. |
| 10 | Rome, Italy | Europe · Early November | 84 | Crowds halved from September, 60% of peak pricing, clear afternoons. |
| 11 | Hanoi, Vietnam | Asia · Late October | 83 | Dry season begins, 72% of peak pricing, lake promenade pleasant. |
| 12 | Buenos Aires, Argentina | Americas · Mid April | 82 | Autumn foliage in Palermo, 55% of peak pricing, wine-region access open. |
| 13 | Amalfi Coast, Italy | Europe · Early October | 81 | Last swimmable week, ferries running hourly, 67% of peak pricing. |
| 14 | Bangkok, Thailand | Asia · Early December | 81 | Coolest week of year, monsoon gone, 78% of peak pricing. |
| 15 | Prague, Czechia | Europe · Mid September | 80 | 22°C, beer-garden weather, 64% of peak pricing, student crowds back. |
| 16 | Sydney, Australia | Oceania · Mid March | 79 | Water still 22°C, coastal walks empty, 71% of peak pricing. |
| 17 | New York, USA | Americas · Late September | 79 | 18°C, Central Park colour starting, 80% of peak pricing. |
| 18 | Tuscany, Italy | Europe · Early November | 78 | Olive harvest underway, villa rates halved, quiet agriturismi. |
| 19 | Reykjavik, Iceland | Europe · Late April | 78 | Spring light, aurora still possible, 52% of peak pricing. |
| 20 | Bali, Indonesia | Asia · Early April | 77 | Pre-monsoon dry air, 69% of peak pricing, surf schools uncrowded. |
| 21 | Paris, France | Europe · Early November | 76 | 13°C, fewer queues at everything, 72% of peak pricing. |
| 22 | Colombo, Sri Lanka | Asia · Early February | 76 | Dry monsoon, trains bookable day-of, 74% of peak pricing. |
| 23 | Vienna, Austria | Europe · Late March | 75 | Pre-tourist spike, 65% of peak pricing, cafés at winter rhythm. |
| 24 | Cartagena, Colombia | Americas · Early March | 75 | End of dry season, 70% of peak pricing, walkable old town. |
| 25 | Barcelona, Spain | Europe · Late October | 74 | Beach days possible, 68% of peak pricing, tapas bars calm. |
| 26 | London, UK | Europe · Late April | 73 | Blossom peak, theatre season still running, 76% of peak pricing. |
| 27 | Vancouver, Canada | Americas · Late May | 72 | Pre-summer-peak, 66% of peak pricing, parks at full bloom. |
| 28 | Queenstown, New Zealand | Oceania · Mid April | 71 | Autumn colour, ski-season lift tickets not yet on sale, 62% of peak pricing. |
| 29 | Singapore | Asia · Early February | 70 | Chinese New Year crowds vary year-to-year; 82% of peak pricing outside the holiday. |
| 30 | Dubai, UAE | Middle East · Late March | 69 | End of cool season, beaches usable, 67% of peak pricing. |
What the data tells us
The first edition of the Shoulder Season Score makes a single point clearly: the best week to visit is rarely the week most travellers book. Lisbon in early October (rank 1) delivers 24°C days, half-emptied terraces, and hotel rates 32 percent below their August peak — essentially the city Lisboetas experience after their own holidays finish. Kyoto in mid-November (rank 2) is a longer-known secret but remains the best-scoring Asian destination because ryokan availability, which evaporates in cherry-blossom and foliage weeks, comes back during the gap between them.
The index also surfaces how much shoulder-season value varies between destinations that share a peak. Mediterranean cities cluster in the 74–92 range (Lisbon, Crete, Seville, Rome, Amalfi, Barcelona) but the value of shifting by two weeks is not uniform — Lisbon's late-September-to-early-October drop is steeper than Barcelona's October softening, for example, because Lisbon's peak is shorter.
Some destinations, notably Singapore (rank 29) and Dubai (rank 30), have unusually flat seasonal curves — there's no 'shoulder' in the weather sense, and pricing is driven more by regional holidays than by climate. Those destinations score low here not because they're bad places to visit but because the premise of the index — that there's an underused week offering meaningful tradeoffs — doesn't apply as strongly. Travellers considering them are better served by an event-calendar approach than a season-window one.
Where the index is most actionable is for travellers with flexible dates and a destination already in mind. A Paris trip moved from July to early November keeps the restaurant scene intact, halves the queue time at the Louvre, and saves roughly 28 percent on hotels — the kind of trade that makes the difference between affordable and prohibitive for many families. The 2026 edition is the first; the intent is to publish a refreshed ranking each April using the prior twelve months of operator data.
Use this data
Free to cite with attribution. Data licensing for commercial use is available — email research@destination.com.
destination.com, "The Shoulder Season Score 2026" — https://destination.com/research/shoulder-season-score-2026