Best (and worst) European Travel Destinations for Hay Fever Sufferers

As the summer months approach, symptoms often become more prevalent, and can cause real problems when traveling to new places, opening up a whole world of new allergens.

For those that know exactly what triggers their allergies, researching the best and worst times to visit certain destinations is essential to ensuring your holiday isn't shaded by unforeseen allergic reactions. Generally speaking you should consider the following before you travel:

• If you have tree pollen allergies, avoiding travel during the spring months is advised, instead, organizing your holidays from July to January will be your best option.
• If you’re especially sensitive to Grass Pollen, then early summer is the time to skip.
• Lastly, if Ragweed is your biggest allergy, early autumn will be a no-go.

We’ve put together a guide to the hottest destinations this year (according to Google searches of US citizens) to show you where and when you should travel to avoid hay fever.

It’s no surprise that for many, summer is the most popular time to explore Europe. See below the places you should visit, or avoid, depending on the allergen you struggle with the most.

Allergies can be greatly impacted by the weather, often colder months with higher rainfall bring relief for allergy sufferers, so here’s the destinations revealed as the best and worst to visit throughout spring, autumn and winter.

Reykjavík, Iceland

Interested in a summer destination with cool temperatures, volcano sightseeings, and loads of hiking activities nearby? Reykjavik. May and June are the best months for you to visit the city and its surroundings if you have a tree and/or grass pollen allergy. For the fans of the adventure and unique experiences, Iceland in summer is a great choice. In June, the sun never sets. This phenomenon is called Midnight Sun, with its maximum light time for midsummer, when the night is an endless sunset.

For those with weed allergies, August is the best time for you.

Lisbon, Portugal

If you’re more interested in big cities and sightseeing, Lisbon in July and August is a great option. While summer in Portugal can be too hot for many, Lisbon's coastline climate and its surrounding beaches makes it a good option for those looking for “a bit of everything”. But it goes beyond that, as Lisbon also offers great music events and festivals during the summer.

If your main allergy issue is grass pollen, you should avoid traveling to Lisbon between May and June.

Dublin, Ireland

For those who prefer to travel to a cooler sightseeing destination, Dublin is the right place. It is also ideal for grass pollen or ragweed pollen sensitive, as it has low concentration of both during the summer. Home of beer and whiskey, there are tours available like this one to visit the Guinness Storehouse and a Whiskey distillery.

Madrid, Spain

The Spanish capital is an ideal destination for those who suffer from weed pollen allergies. With loads of sightseeing and museum options such as El Museo del Prado, musicals, and sport events, especially football, Madrid is a one-fits-all vacay destination.

Those with grass pollen allergy or olive tree pollen allergy might want to avoid the city, especially “El Retiro” park from May to July, when both olive and grass pollen are at their peak.

Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Fans of Harry Potter, this one's for you. Edinburgh is known for its particular architectural style and atmosphere, with many of their most highlighted spots appearing in the wizard saga. Although it didn’t make it on the best city list for tree pollen allergies, it’s also a safe destination for them. However, people with high sensitivity to grass pollen might be wise to avoid it during the early summer whilst it’s at its peak.

While coast cities tend to have a lower pollen count, especially due to humidity, there are multiple factors that will play against that such as inland winds, pollution, and other weather conditions.

If you choose a rainy destination to alleviate your symptoms, you could actually be making them worse. Humidity reduces the symptoms and light to moderate rain can help, but heavy rainfalls can increase the concentration of pollen.

Pollution, especially ozone, does have a negative impact on allergies as well. Air pollutants can change the composition of pollen, increasing the potency of pollen allergens and triggering stronger allergic reactions. On top of that, research shows that plants grown in polluted areas release more pollen for a longer period of time.

Theoretically, Barcelona should be a low pollen allergy city, but its proximity to a mountain range, high wind activity during the spring from inland—which brings more pollen to the city—,dryness and high pollution makes it an ordeal for tree pollen sufferers during the spring.

The weather and wind are unpredictable when planning the holidays ahead of time, but avoiding highly polluted cities during the peak time of your pollen allergy will help a lot.

Methodology

For this campaign, we’ve gathered the most in-demand destinations data from Google Travel Insights to see what are the most searched destinations by those in the US to travel to in Europe. To obtain the pollen count data in those 35 cities, we’ve used a dataset generated by Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service for Europe between May 2023 and April 2024 with a deviation of 48h on surface level. To simplify the data, we’ve calculated the monthly median and classified them by pollen category (trees, grass or weed) and in best and worst cities to travel considering median monthly pollen count in grains/m3 of air.