Ilmastonmuutokseen varautuminen Pohjois-Suomen matkailussa

Abstract

Climate change is one of the important issues that will determine the future of the tourism sector. In this article, we study how global issues such as climate change are taken into account in the future strategic planning of tourism at the levels of tourism region, tourism destination and tourism enterprise in Northern Finland. We compare the perspective of strategies to that of tourism actors. We also examine workshops conducted in tourism destinations. In this paper, climate change exemplifies how the tourism sector in general reacts and prepares for the changing conditions, and how sustainable this operation is. The analysis shows that the strategy rhetoric is fairly general, except for the questions concerning air travel and snow situation in Southern Lapland. The interviewees and the workshop participants repeated the general rhetoric but, at the same time, they emphasized practical actions more than the strategies did. Tourism entrepreneurs already have to face questions about climate change when interacting with tourists, tour operators and media. In the long run, climate change was seen as the most important factor of change in the tourism sector. The adaptation measures can be divided into technical innovations and adjustments of activities to meet the natural conditions.