Projects
Living Environment • 6 min read

Destination RiskScan: Innovation for Tourism Destinations in a Warming World

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Tourist destinations are increasingly vulnerable to climate-related risks. Destination stakeholders often lack a sufficient understanding of these risks and would benefit from greater insight into the extent of their exposure and the actions they can take to adapt. At present, coherent and effective climate adaptation strategies at the destination level remain limited. Tourism depends heavily on natural assets and is strongly influenced by climatic conditions, making destinations particularly vulnerable to changes in seasonality, rising temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and other climate-related impacts.

Goal

Using these two tools, the project aims to:

  1. Increase awareness of climate change among destinations.
  2. Provide destinations with knowledge and tools to assess vulnerabilities and prioritize investments and innovation to strengthen their resilience.
  3. Provide insights to global tourism organisations to help destinations better manage climate risks.

Approach

In the first phase, we develop a climate risk scan for destinations that allows destinations to map their climate risks at the system level. To this end, the climate risks for tourism are identified and categorised, and their mutual relationship is mapped out. Suitable indicators are also defined.

In the second phase, so-called climate risk typologies are developed based on the climate risk framework. These climate risk typologies allow tourist destinations to be categorised based on their exposure to climate risks. This ultimately results in a widely available online application destinations can use to discover their climate risk typology.

In the third phase, a serious game will be developed to help destinations identify and evaluate suitable intervention options for enhancing climate adaptation and resilience, thereby reducing their vulnerability to climate change.

Link with education

As part of the course 'International Field Project (12 ECT), students from the BSc Tourism program at Breda University of Applied Science and Wageningen University will collect case studies in various regional destinations in the Western Balkans region, in which they use value chain analyzes to map out stakeholder perspectives on climate change and the consequences for tourism in this part of Europe.

Partners

  • The Travel Foundation
  • Breda University of Applied Sciences
  • European Tourism Futures Institute
  • Wageningen University & Research
  • Risklayer GmbH

Project team

  • Harald Buijtendijk (Buas)
  • Noël Middelhoek (ETFI)
  • Cheryl van Adrichem (WUR)
  • Bas Amelung (WUR)
  • Kevin Hutchinson (Buas)
  • Bijan Khazai (Risklayer)
  • Andreas Schafer (Risklayer)
  • Annika Maier (Risklayer)

Planning

January 2025-December 2026

Status

Ongoing