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At the beginning of this month, tourists try to enjoy a beach holiday in Banyuls sur-Mer in southwestern France than would be forest fires nearby. Photo: Olivier Chassignole/AFP/Getty Images
It was a prediction that nobody wanted to hear. On the main stage of the world’s largest tourism fair, Stefan Gössling, a leading researcher in sustainable transport, had already announced the threatening death of the holiday industry.
“We have already started the age of non-tourism,” Gössling told an unpleasant audience of travel agencies, car rental companies, cruise companies and hoteliers.
This prophecy may be imaginative for holidaymakers in Europe and North America who rejected this summer and the managers of industry last year, and the managers of industry are pleased that international tourism returns to pre-pandemic highs.
“Mass tourism in Europe began eighty years ago,” said Gössling, professor at the Business and Economics School at Linnaeus University in Sweden, who advised itself on the UN and the World Bank. “In eighty years I am doubtful that there will be a lot of tourism in the world.”
Gössling is not too few examples of goals that already feel the squeezing. Warm weather melts snow that keeps alpine ski areas alive. Coastal erosion removes sand from South European beaches. Dürren forced Spanish hotels to send in fresh water, while swimming pools are empty, while forest fires are landscape in flames in flames.
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According to a study that Gössling is noticeable last month, the south -Egean islands in Greece, which include the tourist favorites of Kos, Rhodes and Mykonos, are the “most one critical” hotspot on the continent, which combines the exposure to climatic driving with dependence on tourism. Next come the Ionian Islands to which Corfu belongs.
The financial burden caused by these problems, which the travel agencies are probably handed over to customers, is reinforced by the rising food costs – from coffee to chocolate to olive oil – and the increasing need for insurance against extreme weather.
“At the moment it is concentrated locally,” said Gössling and spoke to the Guardian in the ITB Berlin, the world’s largest meeting of tourism companies at the beginning of this year. “But in the future it will be more common to cover more places and turn into somewhat disturbing.”
Whether this cost increase could exceed the expected growth of global income – some damage can be avoided by adapting, although this is also at a price – but tourists may also feel in scenarios that keep the volatile weather under control. If carbon pollution is strong – necessary to stop global heating – it costs most sectors such as aviation, which is limited by physical restrictions.
