Passengers board an easyJet flight in Spain as demand rises Credit : Rob Wilson, Shutterstock
If you live in Spain and feel like this summer is already arriving early, you may be right. Airlines say more travellers are now choosing Spain after bookings to Cyprus fell sharply and demand for Greece and Turkey softened following the recent conflict involving Iran, the United States and Israel. EasyJet and Jet2 are among the companies saying the shift is already showing up in holiday demand.
For Spain, that usually means fuller flights, busier resorts and a longer stretch of high-season pressure in places that already feel packed by June. For Cyprus, the mood is very different. Tourism businesses there have been hit by cancellations just as the island was reopening for the summer season.
Why travellers are switching to Spain
The change seems to have started in late February, when the conflict escalated. Reuters reports that Cyprus began seeing a wave of cancellations after US and Israeli strikes on Iran were followed by Iranian counter-strikes. Then a drone hit a British military base on the island on 2 March, which added to travellers’ nerves at exactly the wrong moment for the tourism sector.
That nervousness quickly fed into bookings. According to AirDNA data cited by Reuters, daily cancellation rates for short-term rentals in Cyprus jumped from about 15 per cent before the conflict to as high as 100 per cent in the days that followed. By 21 March, that figure had eased but was still sitting around 45 per cent. Greece and Turkey also saw some increase in cancellations, though the hit there was milder.
Airlines are now seeing where that demand is going instead. EasyJet said customers were shifting away from eastern Mediterranean destinations such as Turkey, Cyprus and Egypt towards western Mediterranean countries including Spain. Reuters also reported that Jet2 saw demand moving in the same direction.
That makes sense in a year like this. When people get uneasy about one part of the Mediterranean, Spain is often the fallback option. It feels familiar, it is well connected, and for British and northern European tourists in particular, it is the easy choice when they want sunshine without extra uncertainty.
Cyprus and Greece are already feeling it
In Cyprus, the effect has not stayed on booking charts. The Cyprus Hoteliers Association told Reuters it had seen nearly a 40 per cent drop in March bookings and a similar fall in April. One hotel executive in Limassol said cancellations had been coming through steadily since 1 March and warned that if the slowdown continued into the peak season, the destination could face real trouble.
The wider economy is already being adjusted around that risk. Reuters reported that the Central Bank of Cyprus cut its 2026 growth forecast to 2.7 per cent from 3.0 per cent, based on the assumption that the conflict would last around two months. The Cypriot government has also announced relief measures including lower VAT on electricity, lower fuel taxes and wage subsidies for tourism workers.
Greece has not seen the same level of shock, but the pressure is there. Reuters says Aegean Airlines, the country’s biggest carrier, has reported a double-digit drop in summer bookings from Israel and Gulf states since the conflict began. Greece’s tourism confederation, SETE, also said pre-bookings had slowed, although some of that had been balanced out by travellers rushing to secure flights before oil prices pushed fares higher.
What this could mean for people living in Spain
For residents in Spain, this kind of shift is rarely invisible. More holiday demand usually means fuller flights, heavier airport traffic, tighter availability in short-term lets and a faster build-up to summer crowds.
If you work in hospitality, aviation, restaurants, retail or seasonal tourism, that can be good news. A stronger push into Spain could mean more hours, more bookings and an earlier start to the busiest part of the year. But if you rent in a tourist-heavy area, it may feel less welcome. Extra demand tends to spill over into the local market, especially in places where housing is already under pressure from holiday rentals.
There is also the price factor. EasyJet has already warned that airfare prices are likely to rise towards the end of the summer because of the war’s impact on fuel costs. So while Spain may benefit from redirected holiday demand, travellers may still end up paying more overall.
That combination could make this summer feel particularly intense in parts of Spain: more people arriving, more pressure on tourist infrastructure, and less of the quiet run-in to peak season that some areas usually get.
A summer that may get busier still
Nothing is settled yet. The conflict could ease, bookings could stabilise, and travellers could shift again. Greece’s tourism sector is still describing the season as positive overall, helped by strong momentum before the war began. Cyprus, meanwhile, is hoping things improve before May.
But right now, the pattern is pretty simple. People who were looking east are looking west instead, and Spain is near the top of the list.
So if your town already feels a little more crowded than it usually does at this point in the year, that may not be your imagination. Spain looks set to pick up even more of the Mediterranean holiday trade – and summer has not properly started yet.