MNG00912: Climate Change Impact on Tourism Industry Essay

This essay delves into the critical intersection of climate change and the tourism industry, specifically examining the environmental management practices within hotels and tourist attractions. It begins by defining climate change and discussing its global significance, highlighting the role of global warming. The essay then analyzes the key impacts of climate change on the tourism sector, such as damage to infrastructure, discomfort for tourists due to rising temperatures, and the emergence of new tourist attractions in conservation units. It emphasizes the contribution of tourism to greenhouse gas emissions and the need for sustainable tourism practices to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The essay provides real-world examples, including the impact of rising airline ticket prices and the potential decline in tourism in certain regions. It concludes by emphasizing the sensitivity of the tourism sector to climate change and the importance of research and adoption of sustainable tourism practices to mitigate negative effects, minimize vulnerability, and plan for adaptation actions. The essay successfully examines the impacts, opportunities, and challenges for sustainable tourism development in relation to global climate change scenarios, providing relevant information for mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Running Head: SUSTAINABLE TOURISM
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Environmental Management for hotels and attraction
(Student Details: )
3/29/2020

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Contents
Climate Change Impact on Tourism Industry............................................................................2
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Climate Change and its global significance...............................................................................2
The key impacts of climate change on tourism sector...............................................................2
Useful relevant examples...........................................................................................................3
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................4
References..................................................................................................................................5

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Climate Change Impact on Tourism Industry
Introduction
This essay is based on environmental management in the context of hotels and tourism
attractions. In doing so, the essay will mainly talk about how climate change is affecting
accommodations as well as the tourism attractions sector worldwide. In general, the topic is
related to climate change as a global issue and hence the impacts of climate change are being
researched in the context of a selected sector as the tourism sector (Semenza & Ebi, 2019).
The essay aims to analyse and critically discuss the key impacts which climate change can
have on the tourism sector while identifying the role of tourism in achieving sustainable
development goals (SDGs). The essay will also include two important real-life examples in
this context to support the responses to the chosen topic.
Climate Change and its global significance
In general, climate change is being seen as a global challenge which has no limitations or
borders as well as to combat it needs coordinated work from all global countries. Mainly,
climate change is caused due to global warming (Bhattarai & Karki, 2020). When the earth’s
overall temperature rises more than the natural limit then huge variations in the climate and
weather are seen. In this context, the overall increased temperature of the earth causes global
warming and thereby climate change. Such a climate change problem is not restricted to
some particular country or city, but it is evenly distributed to the whole world (NASA, 2019).
On the other hand, the key impacts of climate change are also affecting the specific sector of
tourism worldwide. It is because climate change affects tourists’ demand directly while
interfering with the choice of destination as well as the trip duration. In other words, it can be
said that climate change is indirectly affecting the quality of the tourist experience, adverse
perceptions post some extreme event and thereby insecurity about that climate change
affected tourist attraction (Urry, 2015).
The contribution of sustainable tourism to SDGs
In this context, there are 17 SDGs set by United Nations to end poverty, address injustice and
inequality and most importantly fix the issue of global climate change by the year 2030. It
has been found that tourism is playing key role into accomplishing these 17 SDGs by 2030. It

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is because tourism sector is having potential to contribute towards all of the 17 SDGs whether
directly or indirectly. The SDGs include 8, 12 and 14 are narrating about sustainable
consumption, sustainable economic growth as well as the sustainable use of marine and
oceans resources. Hence, if the climate change issue will be addressed then sustainable
tourism can be achieved. Subsequently, sustainable tourism achievement will further help
achieving at least three of the SDGs 8, 12 and 14 effectively and thereby aid to Sustainable
Development Goals agenda by 2030.
The key impacts of climate change on the tourism sector
It is worth knowing that tourism is playing a major role in this discussion of climate change.
Generally, it is an industry badly affected by climate change, as it is constantly making a
considerable contribution to global warming, pollution greenhouse gases’ emissions,
especially because of transportation and infrastructure (tourist accommodations) (Semenza &
Ebi, 2019). As per the research conducted by the World Tourism Organization, it has been
revealed that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in three tourism sectors: transportation,
accommodation, and leisure tourist activities are causing major climate change further
(Edenhofer, 2015).
In this context, there are several ways into which climate change is affecting the tourism
sector negatively. For instance, extreme events caused by climate change often damage
transportation infrastructure because of higher temperatures, flooding, more severe storms or
higher storm surges (Plass et al., 2020). In this way, climate change is affecting the reliability
as well as the capacity of modern transportation systems which ultimately impact tourism in
that area (Urry, 2015).
It is well aware that global temperature is continuously rising because of global warming and
it is causing more climate change events all across the world’s tourism destinations. Thus,
experts have found that the tourism sector is getting affected by this climate change majorly.
It means that high temperature causes discomfort to the tourists when they visit any planned
destination on their travel trip (Edenhofer, 2015). In the tourist attractions of the beach and
sun, tourist arrivals are continuously decreasing because of this global temperature rise and
climate change. On the other hand, new tourist attractions are being seen in the conservation
units, hence these areas are overcrowding and leave ecological impacts which cause further
climate change. The climate change impact on the tourism sector, hotels, and tourist

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attraction places, can be observed with the help of data include tourist arrivals and average
tourist visited in the last few years (Bhattarai & Karki, 2020).
Useful relevant two examples
The way climate change is affecting the tourism sector all across the globe can be understood
with examples with supporting evidence (Urry, 2015).
Firstly, the impact of climate change is huge on the tourism sector as maximum reductions in
tourism seasons are being seen due to abnormal temperature, increased humidity as well as
hike in insolation. These all changes to weather are caused by climate change and they are
causing considerable losses for international tourism (NASA, 2019).
Other examples for the real-life evidence can be seen below:
1. The online travel booking businesses are also sensitive to climate change and thereby
the rising airline ticket prices which may result from hiked fuel costs. Thus, when this
airfare will be too high, then firms such as Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, will
experience reduced tourism demand for travel-related goods and services (Suarez,
2012).
2. It has been found that, the UN World Tourism Organisation has been reported that
hotels and resorts in the western United States stand to experience major decline in
tourism arrivals due to climate change (Suarez, 2012).
Conclusion
In whole, with this discussion, it has been found that tourism is being considered an
economic sector which is highly sensitive to climate change. the reason behind is that the
global tourism sector contributes to the greenhouse gases emission (GHG). The discussion
has also found that GHG emission is one of the major causes of global warming and thereby
climate change. Based on this research on climate change, it can be said that to mitigate the
negative effects of climate change, research and adoption of the concept of sustainable
tourism is required. In this way, this essay has successfully examined the impacts,
opportunities, as well as challenges for sustainable tourism development in relation to global
climate change scenarios. In whole, the essay has covered the possible impacts and
consequences of climate change on the international tourism sector, while providing relevant

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key information for mitigation purposes, minimizing impacts and vulnerability and planning
for adaptation actions.

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References
Bhattarai , K.D. & Karki, S., 2020. Nepal Gets Serious About Climate Change. [Online]
Available at: https://thediplomat.com/2020/01/nepal-gets-serious-about-climate-change/
[Accessed January 2020].
Edenhofer, O., 2015. Climate change 2014: mitigation of climate change. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
NASA, 2019. The Effects of Climate Change. [Online] Available at:
https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/.
Plass , G., Schmidt, G. & Fleming, J., 2020. Carbon Dioxide and the Climate Change.
[Online] Available at: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/carbon-dioxide-and-the-
climate.
Semenza, J. & Ebi, K., 2019. Climate change impact on migration, travel, travel destinations
and the tourism industry. Journal of travel medicine, 26(5).
Urry, J., 2015. Climate change and society. In Why the social sciences matter. London:
Palgrave Macmillan. pp.45-59.