Scenarios for skiing tourism in Austria: integrating demographics with an analysis of climate change

Abstract

Skiing tourism is an important income source in Austria. The future development of skiing tourism is essential for Austria's rural and peripheral areas and their socio-cultural and economic wellbeing, and relevant for the entire Austrian economy. Though a number of factors driving tourism development can be found in the scientific literature, studies on the future of skiing tourism are largely restricted to the potential impacts of climate change. In this paper, potential impacts on the ski tourism industry in Austria caused by climate change and demographic changes were compared. Demographic changes were found to have a higher impact on skiing tourism than climate change in the first half of the twenty-first century, while climate change could be the more dominant driving force towards the end of the century. Demographic changes include population declines in source countries, and a trend to ageing populations. Other complicating factors include possible developments in snowmaking technology and also rising energy/transport costs resulting from climate change mitigation measures. Thus, the tourism industry is required to diversify its product portfolio and foster snow-linked and snow-independent tourism activities that are attractive for older age groups.

奥地利滑雪旅游的情景分析：将人文与气候改变分析结合起来

滑雪旅游在奥地利是一种重要的收入来源。滑雪旅游的将来发展是对奥地利的乡村和边缘地区和他们的社会文化和经济发展是重要的，并且是对整个奥地利经济相关的。尽管一些影响旅游发展的因素在学术文献中能发现，但对将来的滑雪旅游的研究很大程度上被气候改变的潜在影响所限制。在该文中，奥地利的滑雪旅游业由于气候改变和人文改变而造成的潜在影响都作了比较。在21世纪的第一半时间中，人文变化被证实比气候改变对滑雪旅游有更高的影响，而在21世纪的末端，气候改变成为更重要的主导影响力。人文变化包括在来源国家的人口下降，和人口老化的趋势。其他复杂因素包括制雪技术的可能发展，和气候改变缓和方法导致的提高能量和交通费用。因此旅游业被要求于分化产品，并且协助吸引老年人的与雪相关和以雪为主的旅游活动。

Keywords:

• Austria
• winter tourism
• demographic change
• climate change
• scenarios
• future development

关键词:

• 奥地利
• 冬季旅游
• 滑雪旅游
• 人文改变
• 气候变化
• 情景分析
• 将来发展

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the Austrian science fund (FWF) for financing the project “Sustainability of Skiing Tourism in Tyrol and Southern Tyrol” and wants to thank the anonymous reviewers for constructive comments, especially on the methods, which considerably improved the paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert Steiger

Dr Robert Steiger is senior researcher at the Institute of Geography at Innsbruck University and at the alpS-Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Technologies, Innsbruck, Austria. He has worked on climate change impacts on the winter tourism industry in Europe and the sector's climate sensitivity for eight years.