Extended vulnerability of ski tourism to global change

Ralf Roth, Tobias Luthe

Publikation: Beitrag in Buch/Bericht/KonferenzbandKonferenzbeitrag - Aufsatz in KonferenzbandForschungBegutachtung

Abstract

The current and forecasted outcomes of global change put ski destinations under different stresses. Climate change is the most discussed and the most obvious factor that directly affects the economic success of ski areas. Latest since the last OECD report a broad discussion about such ski areas that will lose from climate change, namely the lower and smaller ones, and those potentially winning being the higher and bigger ski ar-eas, got started. This discussion has been focusing on the main vulnerability factors elevation, size and snow making capacity. Technical snow making is the main kind of adaptation to climate change being discussed and applied. But in addition to climate change there are socioeconomic and demographic developments that lead to other grades of vulnerability for ski tourism. In the research project SkiSustain we aim to develop a sustainability management framework for ski destinations responding to global change. In the supply side part we did personal qualitative interviews in thirty six ski areas of four Alpine countries after the extremely warm winter of 2006/07. Ski areas were picked for interviews as the main drivers of investments and employment in ski destinations. Research questions were about the perception of vulnerability to global change and strategies and possibilities of adaptive capacity. In the interviews ski area managements were confronted with recent results from the customer demand survey Save‑Snow to find out about the possibilities to drive changes to chances, for example by softer means of adaptation and more mitigation and partnering more with the customer. Results show that the view on vulnerability of ski destinations needs to be extended from a current climate change and elevation focused view to a much more diverse one. Current means of adaptation will not be suitable to tackle the sum of challenges from global change.
OriginalspracheDeutsch
TitelManagement for protection and sustainable development : Conference Proceedings
Seitenumfang4
ErscheinungsortMontecatini Therme
Erscheinungsdatum2008
Seiten89-92
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 2008

Zitation