Travel in the Climate Crisis
"Nobody Wants to Hike Through a Dead Forest"
Wildfires, flooding, algae blooms – many tourists in Europe and further afield experienced extreme conditions this summer. What might the future hold? Researchers have already begun studying what climate change might have in store for the tourism industry's future.
By Susanne Beyer, Antje Blinda, Susanne Götze, Claus Hecking, Felix Keßler und Philipp Laage
Not all German schoolchildren are back from the summer holidays yet.
And all those in the country who can plan their travels to avoid the school break are still looking forward to their vacations in September and October – to the olive groves, palm trees, seaside promenades and antique wonders of the Mediterranean.
Or to the mountains of Austria, with the lush Alpine meadows, the cozy inns and crystal-clear water.
Or, as winter approaches, perhaps even to the Caribbean – those inviting islands with long, white sandy beaches, lush lagoons and evenings filled with the rhythms of salsa and mambo.
But the excitement over trips abroad, whether just completed or quickly approaching, cannot hide the fact that for many vacationers, the summer of 2023 was and continues to be a summer of catastrophe.
Parts of the Greek island of Rhodes burned up.
Tourists in July found themselves on the beach waiting for rescue boats as dark clouds of smoke rose behind them.
Slovenia, Austria and Norway, meanwhile, were struck by heavy flooding, with entire towns succumbing to the water as cars and parts of buildings floated away before the eyes of locals and tourists alike.
And outside of Europe?
Mexico – including such destinations as Cancún, Tulum and Cozumel – along with the entire Caribbean, places like Jamaica, Cuba, Barbados, the Dominican Republic and Florida: All these beaches, the main attraction of Caribbean tourism, have again this year been plagued by mountains of sargassum seaweed.
Once it starts to decompose, it begins smelling of rotten eggs and can cause difficulties breathing.
As the algae drifts through the sea, it collects arsenic, which is then carried ashore as well.
Or the algae sinks to the bottom of the sea when it dies, destroying coral reefs.
Who wants to spend their Caribbean vacation fighting through carpets of decomposing algae?
Sargassum seaweed piled high on a beach in Cancún, Mexico. Foto: Daniel Slim / AFPThis week, by contrast, the news was dominated by the horrific wildfire catastrophe in Hawaii, the epitome of vacation paradise.
The destruction seen on television screens around the world looked apocalyptic, and it still isn’t clear how many people lost their lives.
Meanwhile, wildfires also erupted in southern France this week, with 3,000 tourists being evacuated from campsites in the area.
In the Pyrénées-Orientales department, trees and brushland stood in flames as more than 500 firefighters battled the blaze, along with 13 planes and three helicopters.
Unpredictable Weather
The fires are facilitated by climate change, whether they occur on Rhodes, on Maui or in southern France.
Temperatures have already begun demonstrably rising due to the greenhouse effect, resulting in aridity.
Areas that were once lush and green are now dry and brown, full of flammable underbrush and deadwood – just waiting for a spark to transform it all into an inferno.
Flooding of the kind seen this summer in Austria and Slovenia, meanwhile, is also magnified by climate change.
The waters of the Mediterranean reached extreme temperatures due to weeks of oppressive heat in the region, resulting in more water evaporating into the atmosphere.
That moisture then poured out of the sky a short time later over the Alps.
Flooded streets in the Austrian city of Klagenfurt Foto: Slovencik / Expa / Eibner Europa / IMAGOAnd the over 8,000-kilometer-long sargassum belt in the Atlantic?
That, too, is a product of climate change.
Higher water temperatures promote the growth of the stinking algae.
But even beyond the fires and flooding, the 2023 holiday season has been a challenging one for travelers.
On Sicily, temperatures in July climbed over 47 degrees Celsius (116 degrees Fahrenheit).
It was dangerous to even go outside during the day, and the island’s beaches only came alive at night.
Now that the summer of 2023 is approaching its end, a summer that included some of the highest July temperatures ever recorded, many have begun asking: What will become of future vacations?
Are tourists already changing their travel behaviors based on the catastrophes triggered by global warming?
How will the shifting climate affect tourism regions over the long term?
What can those areas that are particularly in danger do to protect themselves?
What can policymakers do?
"Tourism relies on an intact environment and functional landscapes," says human geographer Niklas Völkening, who studies the way in which tourism is adapting to climate change at the University of Augsburg.
"Nobody wants to hike through a dead forest or stroll through a flooded town.
You can’t go swimming in stormy seas or go skiing when there’s no snow."
A $10 Trillion Business
Tourism and climate researchers are working closely together to determine what might lie ahead.
Forecasts from climatologists are growing in importance for economists as well, since tourism is one of the most important industries in the world.
According to the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), it contributed more than 10 percent to global economic output in 2019, before the arrival of the pandemic.
Business travelers and vacationers produced revenues of around $10 trillion.
Furthermore, around 334 million jobs depended directly or indirectly on the sector that year, with one of five new jobs around the world coming in the travel and tourism sector between the years of 2014 and 2019.
During the coronavirus pandemic, revenues plummeted, but they quickly recovered once travel restrictions were lifted.
According to WTTC, the travel sector again contributed 7.6 percent to global gross national product in 2022 and now provides jobs directly or indirectly to almost 300 million people.
Furthermore, with China having lifted its restrictions later than other countries, the world is experiencing yet another vacation boom.
For a large number of countries, the money brought in by tourists is one of their primary sources of hard currency, including places like Thailand, New Zealand, Greece, Austria, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, the Maldives and many more.
In other words, the effects of climate change on the travel sector go far beyond questions of where vacationers can still enjoy a bit of relaxation.
The fates of entire countries depend on how rising temperatures will change travel habits.
Perhaps the most important question is the degree to which extreme weather events are the product of climate change.
The field of attribution science is one where scholars are seeking to determine whether the probability of extreme weather events is going up as a result of global warming.
Tourists on Rhodes escaping the flames Foto: Michael Stokes / SWNS / action pressTemperatures of 50 Degrees
Researcher Mariam Zachariah, for example, works for Initiative World Weather Attribution, a leading network of attribution scientists.
On behalf of DER SPIEGEL, she calculated whether a heatwave of the kind seen on Sicily in July might still be considered a normal event by historical comparison, or whether it was very likely the product of climate change.
For her analysis, Zachariah looked at weather data from the past 70 years.
In the case of Sicily, her calculations were clear: Average high temperatures in late July were over 38 degrees Celsius – almost 2 degrees higher than in 1950.
For researchers, the link between heatwaves and climate change has become increasingly obvious anyway.
They are also able to predict with a certain degree of accuracy how frequently heatwaves will occur in the coming decades and how intense they will be.
According to those forecasts, the number of days in the Mediterranean region and the Middle East with temperatures of over 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) is likely to significantly increase.
"We estimate the likelihood has increased by a factor of 10 to 1,000," reads a study by the British weather service Met Office that appeared in the Nature publication npj Climate and Atmospheric Science.
At some of the 12 locations examined for the study – in places like southern Spain, Turkey and Tunisia – such life-threatening temperatures could be an annual occurrence by the end of the century.
When thermometers hit 50 degrees, people don’t just get sick, they collapse – a lesson clearly learned from past heatwaves.
Tourists Are Slow to Change Habits
What does that mean for the future of tourism?
Researcher Nicoleta Anca Matei has produced a tourism-climate index to model which regions stand to lose from the climate crisis, and which areas might actually benefit.
"Southern Spain, for example, already has weather at the peak of summer that is less attractive than it was 20 years ago," she says, before adding her prediction that it will get worse.
But climate and tourism researchers are also fully aware that travelers pay little attention to the facts when planning their trips.
Data and statements from the tourism industry, such as from the German Travel Association (DRV), paint a surprisingly clear picture: The standard travel routes have hardly changed at all in recent years.
"We know that past behaviors are perpetuated," says Harald Zeiss, a tourism researcher from the Harz University of Applied Sciences.
Those looking for all-inclusive vacations on a sunny beach aren’t likely to suddenly book a hiking trip in Norway.
Tourists quickly returned to Rhodes despite the fires this summer. Foto: Petros Giannakouris / dpaGermany's TUI, one of the largest travel companies in the world, reports that lodgings on the island of Rhodes, which became available through cancellations and re-bookings in the wake of the fire, were quickly sold again.
The Mediterranean remains the favored vacation region for people around Europe, including the Germans. Sand, beach and sun – even if temperatures might climb above 40 degrees Celsius every now and then.
For one thing, the heat doesn’t feel quite as threatening when you’re wearing a bikini or shorts.
"People in an air-conditioned hotel environment with a pool experience 38 degrees differently than they do in a paved city walking across the Acropolis, for example," says TUI spokesperson Aage Dünhaupt.
Might that safe hotel environment explain why travelers have been slow to change their habits in response to climate change?
That, at least, is what the results seem to indicate from a study produced for the European Commission on how the climate might affect the tourism industry in the medium and long term.
"With warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, travel behaviors will hardly change at all," says study author Nicoleta Anca Matei.
"But there has been quite a bit of movement already in some regions."
Of the 269 regions the scientists examined, 77 are likely to be negatively affected in the 1.5-degree scenario.
Britain Wins, Greece Loses
The effects, though, would not be felt throughout the year.
The study team believes there will be seasonal differences. In the summer months, says Matei, up to 7 percent fewer tourists may make their way to southern Greece, Italy, Spain or Portugal.
But "demand in these regions will rise in the spring and autumn."
The summer months, though, will see changes, the researcher believes.
Matei works in Seville, and the air conditioning can be heard humming in the background during her video interview with DER SPIEGEL.
Outside, she says, it is 40 degrees Celsius, and without air conditioning she wouldn’t be able to work or think.
She says signs have now been put up in the streets and squares of her city warning of the heat.
In the study, she and her team examined a number of different scenarios, from a moderate increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius – which has already been reached in parts of the Mediterranean region and is likely to become global reality by the early 2030s – to an increase of 3 to 4 degrees.
This worst-case scenario, though, is only likely in the second half of the century if the climate protection measures that have already been agreed to are ignored or revoked.
In the most extreme scenario, the heat would be unbearable across the entire Mediterranean region, Matei believes.
In such a situation, Mediterranean regions would, on average, receive 10 percent fewer visitors per year – while parts of the United Kingdom would host 16 percent more travelers.
According to Matei’s findings, vacationers will only slowly shift their focus to destinations further to the north.
In the most extreme scenario of a 4-degree increase, the countries of Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal could lose up to 30 percent of the market.
Travelers would perhaps only head to the Côte d’Azur in February, while choosing to spend their summers in northern Sweden.
But the Augsburg-based human geographer Völkening says that northern regions shouldn’t get too excited.
He is rather skeptical that the Baltic Sea could become the new Mediterranean, particularly given that the water quality of the Baltic could worsen significantly .
Because the sea is largely land-locked, warming temperatures could produce blooms of toxic blue algae.
Ski Areas Below 1,800 Meters Are at Risk
Winter vacations in Austria and other Alpine countries, meanwhile, are going to change dramatically no matter what, that much has already become abundantly clear.
According to a study by the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Switzerland, if humanity doesn’t drastically reduce CO2 emissions, natural snow cover below altitudes of 1,200 meters (4,000 feet) will become rare.
What that might look like was on full display early in the ski season last winter, with green hillsides everywhere, broken up only by white ribbons of artificial snow.
Indeed, without artificial snow, most ski areas wouldn’t be able to operate any more at all.
Though far from just saving the ski season, fake snow has actually extended the number of days skiers can hit the slopes in the last three decades – by an average of 39 days in Austria, according to estimates.
With the help of computer-controlled snow-management systems, ski areas are able to produce snow-covered slopes even when temperatures hover above zero.
Artificial snow, however, is ecologically controversial and expensive to produce – and the zenith of its effectiveness has already been reached, says Innsbruck-based economist Robert Steiger, who conducts research into the effects of global warming on tourism in the Alps.
The warming of the atmosphere, he points out, has caused it to become wetter in the Alps, which pushes the fake snow technology to its limits.
A ski run in Austria on January 7, 2023 Foto: Action Pictures / IMAGOIndeed, ski areas located below the 1,800-meter mark don’t likely have much of a long-term future, despite fake snow production.
But those resorts situated above 2,000 meters can expect snow security for decades to come with the help of artificial snow, according to a study from the University of Basel.
Preparations Are Key
Regions across Europe and around the world are searching for methods to reduce the negative effects of global warming on the tourism industry.
Human geographer Völkening urges that no time be lost in that effort.
Hotel operators and municipalities, he says, must react promptly, "because the costs of doing nothing are extremely high."
Even measures like creating more shade to protect buildings and pathways along with air conditioning and better insulation can help, he says.
Fire ecologist Johann Georg Goldammer, meanwhile, has a list of helpful hints for reducing the risk of wildfires.
He advises "targeted grazing" by cattle, for example, the crushing of underbrush using heavy equipment and controlled burning to rob wildfires of fuel.
His recommendations are in demand worldwide.
Lower water levels in lakes could be counteracted by floating islands or adjustable docks.
In the mountains, trails need to be maintained such that hikers don’t slip easily in heavy rainfall.
Völkening recommends that places become more independent when it comes to power supply as well, such as through the installation of solar panels, and to consider crisis scenarios, like emergency evacuation plans.
"It has been proven," Völkening says, "that nothing hurts a place more than when people die or are injured there."
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