(CNN) – Just when you thought it was safe to jump back into the water of the pandemic, Europe is having another cataclysmic summer. This time, it’s not pandemic red tape, but what looks set to be the continent’s worst drought in history. About 63% of the land in the EU and UK had drought warnings or alerts, according to the EU’s European Drought Observatory last week, and this figure was issued before the UK declared drought in eight of the 14 zones. New alerts arrive every day.
While the landscape is dry as hell, water levels are plummeting. Rivers and lakes are drying up and, in addition to having devastating effects on trade and industry, it is also hitting a sector that was already on its knees thanks to the pandemic: tourism. Worse, experts say this is a worrying sign of things to come.
Drama on the Rhine
The Rhine is now so low that commercial shipping is unsustainable.
Michael Probst/AP
The 766-mile Rhine is one of Europe’s most important trade routes, with container ships plying its bends.
It is also a classic cruise itinerary. But now some of those waterway dreams seem stuck.
On Saturday, the water level in the critical German town of Kaub dropped to just 36 centimeters, or 14 inches, according to official figures. This is devastatingly low: at 40 centimeters, commercial shipping is not profitable.
None of this is news, says Clare Weeden, senior lecturer in tourism and marketing at the University of Brighton.
“Anyone who operates river cruise ships would have understood this because of the way the climate has changed in the last 20 years,” he says, adding that low levels in the Rhine and Danube have seen incidents of passengers being transported from a bus destination to another during the last five or six years. But while cruise lines have anticipated this, customers have not.
“River cruising is becoming much more popular, especially for active people,” he says.
“Dock early, spend the day enjoying a city, then come back to the ship at the end of the day and keep sailing. It’s much more relaxed. [than mass cruising]. But drought and climate change have coincided with the rise of river cruises.”
But he warns that, with the climate crisis, Europe’s traditional river cruises will “certainly suffer” and predicts that “the industry is likely to reboot as a result”.
A booming business, for now
The Rhine is a classic destination for river cruises in Europe.
Michael Probst/AP
Helen Prochilo, of cruise specialist Promal Vacations, said European river cruises are “the hottest thing we’re selling this year”.
A little too hot: While none of his clients have been affected yet, he says that among his fellow agents, one canceled a client’s cruise this week and another adjusted itinerary Changes to river cruises are usually very last minute, because they depend on water levels and rain.
Prochilo says many river cruise ships are specifically built with flatter hulls to deal with low water levels. In case of difficulty, those who have swimming pools on board can empty them. Railings, furniture and even the captain’s bridge are designed to lower, while passing under bridges in high water, adds Rob Clabbers, president of Q Cruise + Travel, a Virtuoso member agency in Chicago.
Not that this avoids problems. In 2017, Prochilo booked a Rhine cruise herself with Emerald, only to find “very low levels” of water.
“The boat emptied the pool to lighten the load and we could hear the boat hitting the bottom of the river,” he says.
“We never saw the captain after the first night. He stayed on the bridge to make sure the ship was handled carefully.”
Others were not so lucky. Prochilo says they passed another cruise line unloading their passengers onto buses.
“The construction of the boat and the experience of the captains is very important when the weather is like this,” he says. And he’s taking no chances: watching water levels drop on the Rhine over the past month has prompted him to advise would-be bookers to wait until next year.
“I also advise them to sail earlier in the season, as river levels don’t seem to be a problem if they’re traveling in May or June compared to July or August,” he says.
For those who have already booked, make regular calls to river cruise lines checking conditions.
Those conditions are pretty devastating — levels are “exceptionally low” in some areas, German officials told CNN on Friday.
In fact, Weeden believes that Rhine cruises “will be a thing of the past” before long.
So what will happen this year? CLIA, which represents cruise ship operators, says:
“River cruise operators … are monitoring the situation and responding appropriately by contacting the relevant authorities.
“Guest and crew safety will be central to any decisions regarding itineraries. When changes are planned, operators are working hard to minimize any disruption.”
River cruise specialist Riviera Travel said in a statement: “We have seen minimal disruption so far as we have put measures in place, including ship swaps and minor itinerary changes, to ensure guests can still enjoy to the maximum their cruises”. A ship may leave a destination a couple of hours earlier, for example. The Viking Cruises website states that “low water levels will affect some river itineraries.” Affected travelers will be contacted by the cruise line.
To mitigate the problems, Viking operates sister ships that sail the same itinerary, but in opposite directions. If there is a problem on one side of the river, guests can transfer to the other boat.
Clabbers says “many lines” do. “If low (or high) water prevents passage at a certain point, the line simply moves the downstream sailing passengers (and their luggage) to the upstream vessel and vice versa. The vessels return to their point of origin with its ‘new’ passengers who simply continue their journey without too many interruptions”.
And if all else fails, they use the ship as a hotel and bus travelers to their destinations each day. It may not be that romantic, but it’s effective.
“The distances covered on a river cruise aren’t very long, so sometimes passengers will even see more as the buses travel faster,” says Clabbers, from personal experience.
“On a Uniworld cruise a few years ago, high water kept the ship in Vienna for three days, and the company did a fantastic job of creating additional tours that showed us sights that weren’t included in our original schedule.”
Have you booked a Rhine cruise for this year? Don’t cancel, he says, you might get penalized. Just try to go with the flow. But if you haven’t booked yet and want to travel this year, he suggests looking for alternatives like the Seine or the Duero.
No river unscathed
The Danube has fallen in Budapest.
Anna Szilagyi/AP
Not that they are much better. The picture is bleak for all the rivers in Europe.
And of course there is the Danube. The situation on Europe’s other main tourist river also looks bleak. Emergency dredging is currently underway in the lower river, in Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria.
While there are “no problems” on the Austrian stretch, officials told CNN on Friday, the situation in Hungary, perhaps the most famous part of the Danube, is more worrisome.
The drought is already devastating trade: an average 1,600-tonne ship can now only navigate the river without any cargo, according to the Hungarian Tourism Agency. So far, the situation of tourist boats remains the same. Mahart Passnave Passenger Shipping Ltd., which operates river cruises, continues to operate along the Danube, although some stations are closed in northern Budapest. Between Szentendre and Visegrád, about 15 kilometers north of the capital, the river makes a big loop. “Some stations [there] they have been closed for about a month now, as boats cannot dock due to the low water level,” says a representative of the Hungarian Tourism Agency.
But not all companies manage to navigate the river, and not all are having as good a bussing experience as Clabbers did.
“I had travelers whose ship couldn’t make it to Budapest; they had to board their ship in Komarno,” an hour away in Slovakia, says tour guide Julia Kravianszky.
“The travelers flew to Budapest, from where they were taken to Komarno by bus, and were taken back to Budapest the next day for their city tour, only to return to the ship by bus after turn”.
Things already look different in Budapest, perhaps the most beautiful city on the river.
“The Danube is visibly lower at the moment, it’s been very low for two or three weeks,” says Kravianszky.
“Margaret Island looks bigger, because all the rocks on the river bottom are now visible. Parts of the old Margaret Bridge destroyed in WWII are also visible now.”
But don’t cancel the trip just yet. The river still “looks big and majestic; it doesn’t really give the image of a dry river,” he says. For now, it’s the locals who can tell the difference.
“If it’s like this next year, I’ll retire”
In Italy, the Po is not navigable in some parts.
Francesca Volpi/Bloomberg/Getty Images
And then there’s Italy, where the Po River is at record lows, and has almost disappeared in some places. It’s disastrous news for the whole country, and it’s also put an end to tourism in parts of the river this summer.
For the past 20 years, Stefano Barborini has rented boats and taken visitors to his stretch of the Po near Parma. This year, he hasn’t been able to manage a single outing.
“I’ve been on the Po for 40 years, and this has never happened before,” he says. “We’ve had droughts before, but this low, never. There’s been bottom erosion, so the river has gotten deeper. It’s generally navigable year-round.”
This year, he says, “it started very early: there was no rain and everything dried up.”
Their small boats tend to be pulled all over the river, and near the beaches, to…