School holiday data for travel and publishing teams
218 UK councils across all 4 nations. 28 European countries. 3 US states. Every date sourced from official government publications.
What the dataset covers
- 218 UK local authority councils across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland — the data behind the heatmap and all nation pages on this site
- 28 countries across 78 regional zones — France zones A, B, C; Portuguese regions; Belgium's three communities; and national calendars for Spain, Italy, Greece, Iceland, Germany, Netherlands, Ireland, Turkey, Croatia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Cyprus, Malta, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Morocco, Dubai (UAE), and Egypt
- 3 US states — Florida, California, and New York, each based on a representative school district proxy (OCPS, LAUSD, NYC DOE)
- 6 holiday types: summer, October half-term, Christmas, Easter, February half-term, May half-term
- Academic years 2024/25, 2025/26, 2026/27 — 2027/28 added as councils publish
How it's maintained
Every date is sourced from an official government or local authority publication. Nothing is estimated or inferred. UK dates come from council-published term date calendars; EU dates come from national education ministry publications. Each page on this site links to its source.
Data is updated manually each year as councils publish new academic year dates, typically between January and June. The "dates last verified" stamp on every page shows when each dataset was last checked.
Use cases
- "When to go" callouts on destination guides and hotel pages — surface the quietest weeks automatically
- School-holiday demand widgets embedded in flight and package search results
- Travel calendar tools and planning features for OTAs and booking platforms
- Editorial content — school holiday round-ups, "avoid the crowds" features, affiliate travel publishing
Format and availability
Data is available as structured JSON via direct agreement. The format is consistent — councils and countries are named objects with holiday buckets and ISO date ranges. An API and embeddable widget are on the roadmap; if that's what you need, say so when you get in touch.
The crowd score
The crowd score is the core differentiator. Most holiday tools show you one thing: when UK schools are off. The crowd score combines three:
- UK school-holiday demand: the percentage of 218 UK councils on holiday that week, across all four nations. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have different term dates to England, so the figure reflects the real national picture.
- Destination school-holiday demand: whether schools at the destination are on holiday. A week when French schools are off will be busy at French resorts regardless of UK timing.
- Source market demand: the term dates of other nationalities most likely to be visiting, weighted by Eurostat international tourism data (tourist nights by country of residence). Spain’s top source markets include Germany and France. If those schools are also on holiday, the destination sees demand from multiple source markets at once.
The result: a single percentage reflecting real crowd conditions. Not whether you can travel, but whether the destination will actually be quiet when you arrive. A score near 0% means every market is in term. A score near 100% means peak demand from every direction simultaneously.
Full methodology with worked examples →
Get in touch
Email offterm.contact@gmail.com with a brief description of your use case. No sales process — just a conversation about whether the data fits what you're building.