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Climatic Change (2006) 79: 181183
DOI 10.1007/s10584-006-9191-6
Stefan Gssling & C. Michael Hall
Received: 5 October 2006 / Accepted: 5 October 2006 / Published online: 9 November 2006 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2006
Of all the journal publications [...], 40% have appeared in climatemeteorological journals, 42% in a range of geographyenvironmental management-planning focused journals, and only 18% in tourismrecreation journals. [...] Advances in understanding of the vulnerability of tourism sectors and destinations to climate change require these disciplinary barriers be overcome and the level of collaboration between tourism and climate change experts increase. Scott et al. (2005: 54)
The results of research on tourism and climate change, such as Scott et al. (2005) and Bigano et al. (2006), indicates that there is a clear need to address disciplinary barriers not only with respect to problem definition but also in relation to method and understanding. We thus welcome the debate on the effects of global environmental change on tourist patterns and behaviours, and, more specifically, modelling tourist flows under scenarios of climate change. Even though there might currently be substantial differences in the methods chosen to understand these interrelationships, there is also common ground. There is undoubtedly consensus that climate is an important destination asset, and a significant factor in destination choices for some categories of tourists, particularly for leisure travellers and holiday makers. Consequently, there is a general agreement that tourist flows will alter under scenarios of climate change. However, there is significant disagreement over the extent and rate of such change and over the extent which data and results from one scale of analysis can be upscaled or down-scaled to others.
It has never been our intention to question the interaction between climate change and tourism. Rather, we wished to point out several weaknesses associated with existing models assessing tourist flows under climate change scenarios, with the overall goal to advocate
S. Gssling (*)
Department of Service Management, Lund University, Box 882, 251 08 Helsingborg, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]
C. M. Hall
Department of Management, University of Canterbury, Private Bag...