Tourism is now one of the sectors most affected by global warming. In southern Europe, destructive fires and a thermometer flirting with 40 degrees are pushing tourists to return home in disaster. A question now arises: will climate change also change the situation for tourism, particularly in the Mediterranean?
The regions that attract the most holidaymakers are also the most affected by climate change. In Greece, thousands of tourists were recently evacuated from the islands of Rhodes and Corfu, ravaged by fires favored by the heat wave. Other countries around the Mediterranean are affected. In Spain, temperatures sometimes exceeded seasonal norms by 15°C. Italy also suffered from these heat waves, with the mercury even approaching 48°C in Sardinia. Tunis was suffocating with 49°C last week. However, tourism represents a very important part of the region’s economy. In particular in Greece and Spain where it constitutes respectively almost a quarter of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 12%.
Will the hottest countries be shunned?
High summer temperatures could dampen the enthusiasm of visitors, warn professionals in the sector. For the CEO of Voyageurs du monde Jean-François Rial, interviewed by Agence France Presse, “global warming will make destinations less and less frequentable. The whole Mediterranean is concerned, although it is the main destination for tour operators Europeans”.
In Spain, “we are starting to hear tourists wondering” about the advisability of coming to spend the summer on the Mediterranean coast, underlines Joantxo Llantada, professor at the IE Business School in Madrid. According to a recent note from Moody’s, heat waves could reduce the attractiveness of southern Europe, or “at least reduce demand in summer, with negative economic consequences”.
Finished, the sun?
Not quite. Hamit Kuk, president of the association of Turkish travel agencies, tempers: “It is not a problem that it is hot in Antalya, because European tourists come for the sun”. Same story in Tunisia, according to the president of the Tunisian hotel federation, Dora Miled: “There is no impact of the heat on tourism,” she told AFP. “If we have not yet found the level of activity of 2019 […] it is first of all because of the high cost of air travel”. Didier Arino, director of the consulting firm Protourisme, in France, agrees: “For their holidays, people do not dream of a fresh destination, they want Good weather.”
Even in Greece, it is not certain that the fires deter tourists. Kostas Chryssohidées, vice-prefect of the Dodecanese, thus indicates that on Sunday and Monday, “24,000 vacationers arrived on the island of Rhodes” and notes just “a few cancellations as a precaution”.
Can other countries benefit from it?
When it becomes impossible to visit a city transformed into an oven, tourists can turn to other avenues. For the past ten years, notes Jean-François Rial to AFP, “destinations in northern Europe have been rising”. He also believes that England, not very popular, could benefit from it, just like Ireland.
In Belgium, Pierre Coenegrachts, of the regional tourism agency in Wallonia, indicates that the search for cool places “regularly comes up in the requests of visitors”. With more and more visitors… Spanish and Italian.
Are we heading towards another form of tourism?
There is one point on which professionals in the sector agree: tourism is going to change. They anticipate that the Mediterranean could attract more visitors in other seasons than in summer, a phenomenon made possible by the fact that a significant proportion of tourists are retirees. Hamit Kuk even believes that “if global climate change continues to increase, we will have to rethink our seasons […]. Perhaps November will be included in the summer season, and April in the winter season”. For Jean-François Rial, “This can be a chance to reduce ‘overtourism’, while losing customers summer, but increasing them over the other nine months”.
In Croatia, where tourism accounts for 20% of GDP, experts argue for the development of other forms of tourism (farther from the Adriatic), which could benefit rural areas for example. Albania is also expecting a change of habits, with a summer season extending until October. The country estimates that 10 million visitors will go there in 2023, 30% more than a year earlier. It’s the same thing in Italy, where the lengthening of the hot season “offers new opportunities to promote tourism during traditionally less busy periods”, explains Ivana Jelinic, in charge of the Italian national tourist office.