The Climate Adaptation Gap in Tourism: From Risk to Resilience

This ITB Berlin 2025 session presented the results of a global climate adaptation survey conducted jointly by ITB Berlin and the international consultancy mascontour between late September and early December 2024. The survey gathered 172 respondents from across the tourism system — DMOs and private sector actors each accounting for roughly one-third of responses, with the remainder drawn from NTOs, public authorities, and research institutions. Respondents spanned all governance levels (local to transnational) and came from 60 countries across all world regions, covering coastal, urban, mountain, and island destination types.

Thomas Frommhold, Senior Consultant and head of research at mascontour, presented the findings. The most frequently anticipated near-term climate impacts were heatwaves and heavy rainfall, followed by water scarcity and biodiversity loss; sea level rise and coastal flooding were noted as more destination-specific. Despite near-universal high risk awareness, only 18% of destinations reported having an operational adaptation strategy. Roughly half described themselves as in transition (drafting, adopting, or beginning implementation), while nearly one-third had no strategy at all or were uncertain. Only 8% of respondents considered their current adaptation measures effective; the majority rated them as only moderately or slightly effective. Destinations tended to prioritize low-barrier, flexible measures such as nature-based solutions and product diversification, while more capital-intensive and structurally complex measures — like infrastructure upgrades, relocation of vulnerable assets, and supply chain resilience — showed far lower implementation rates. The top overall barrier was fragmented responsibilities and unclear governance, followed by weak or inconsistent policies and insufficient funding.

The panel discussion featured Dr. Ana Tripkovic Markovic (Vice-President and Managing Director, European Travel Commission / National Tourism Organisation of Montenegro), Dona Regis-Prosper (Secretary-General and CEO, Caribbean Tourism Organization), Prof. Dr. Stefan Gossling (Professor, School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University, Sweden), and Jeremy Sampson (CEO, Travel Foundation).

Gossling framed the problem as a game theory dilemma: every actor has economic reasons to act but prefers to maintain existing business models, leading to collective inaction. He warned that long-haul tour operators face existential financial risk from planned EU emissions legislation — in a sample of 11 operators, profit margins on long-haul routes were projected to disappear entirely once current EU policy is fully implemented. He also stressed that ReFuelEU Aviation is currently the only meaningful aviation emissions policy in the world.

Regis-Prosper described the Caribbean as a lived example rather than a laboratory: 80% of some island economies depend on travel and tourism, 40 million residents plus 40 million annual visitors have been directly affected by climate change, and the region has personally experienced more than 10 Category 5 hurricanes. She highlighted hurricane Melissa and its ripple effects across Jamaica, Haiti, the Bahamas, and Turks and Caicos as a recent illustration. She noted that the Caribbean has moved beyond sustainability to regenerative tourism as a core adaptation strategy.

Tripkovic Markovic cited Montenegro's experience of severe wildfires the previous summer as an example of ad hoc rather than planned coordination, calling for formal intersectoral task groups with defined KPIs and designated regional coordinators. She advocated linking national and EU funding eligibility to climate adaptation criteria and described the ETC's climate action plan (based on the Glasgow Declaration) and its associated destination handbook and funding scheme.

Sampson identified the core contradiction: nearly two-thirds of destinations expect significant climate impacts within 5 years, yet only 18% have an operational adaptation strategy and only 8% find current measures effective. He argued this is not a climate awareness gap but a finance and governance gap. Tourism represents 10% of global GDP but is structurally underintegrated into climate finance mechanisms. Adaptation finance is invisible because it prevents losses rather than generating revenue, making the business case harder to quantify. He called for tourism to be embedded in national adaptation plans and multilateral climate funds, for standardized destination-level risk disclosure, and for a shift from project finance to blended finance models. The panel agreed the 2030 target of every European country having a measurable, funded climate action plan embedded in tourism policy is the minimum realistic benchmark.