Journal of Earth Science & Climatic Change
Open Access

Abstract

Tourism is an important source of economic growth in the Mediterranean and one of the key industrial sectors for many countries in the region. Being strongly weather dependent, the tourism sector is expected to be particularly affected by climate change within the next decades. The effects of climate change are challenging all industries, but are especially relevant to the long term growth of the tourism industry particularly in Mediterranean summer tourism destinations. Climate change is expected to shift summer tourism patterns, eventually leading to an increase of tourist volume and expenditures in colder countries and fall in warmer countries. The impacts of climate change on summer tourist flows would be entirely due to the much higher temperatures forecasted for the summer, which would make summer tourism destinations less attractive. The relationship between climate change and tourism is expected to have important economic and development implications for many tourism destinations globally. Eventhough there is a recent surge in academic debate worldwide on climate change and its impacts on tourism, there have been few studies specifying these impacts on the countries of the Mediterranean basin. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the existing literature on the impact of climate change on tourism in the Mediterranean region and to set out an agenda for future research. The paper outlines the conceptual framework of the different types of climate change impacts and discusses how the suitability of the Mediterrannean climate for tourism will change, and how this will affect destinations and tourism flows in the region. The paper aims at setting an agenda for future research concerning the necessity of climate change economic impact studies on Mediterranean summer tourism, related especially to vulnerability issues on a local level.

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