Tourist flows in Europe are likely to undergo profound changes due to global warming. That’s according to a study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Center (JRC), which uses data from 269 regions collected over a twenty-year period to try to predict how things will change for this important European industry by the year 2100. Scientists have envisioned four different scenarios: a temperature increase of one and a half degrees compared to 1990 levels, two degrees, three degrees, or four. The first two scenarios are also the goal of the Paris climate agreement: to limit overheating to 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius. The others, on the other hand, would represent a major failure of current policy. The collected data made it possible to recognize strong connections between the development of the climate and hotel reservations and to formulate forecasts for the future on this basis.
The Mediterranean countries in particular would lose out, but those in the Alpine region would also be negatively affected, such as Austria or Slovenia (Switzerland is not included in the study). Cyprus would lose almost 10% of its tourist attractiveness. Instead, Germany, Denmark, France, Ireland, Holland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and most notably Finland would win. Travel habits can also change with the seasons, with travel increasing in April and decreasing in the summer months.
Tourism is an important economic sector for the EU, responsible for creating 10% of GDP (however this is an average value, for individual countries like Greece, Croatia or Italy it is a much more important economic sector). The sector consists of 2.3 million companies employing over 12 million people, mostly seasonal workers. If related industries are included, the number of jobs dependent on tourism rises to nearly 27 million. In 2019, before the Corona crisis, almost half of the global arrivals of international tourists concerned Europe: 745 million out of one and a half billion arrivals.
Published on: Jul 23, 2023 4:59 pm. Last modified: July 23, 2023, 21:04