Ski tourism is a multi-billion dollar international market attracting between 300 and 350 million annual skier visits. With its strong reliance on specific climatic conditions, the ski industry is ...regarded as the tourism market most directly and immediately affected by climate change. A critical review of the 119 publications that have examined the climate change risk of ski tourism in 27 countries is provided. This growing and increasingly diverse literature has projected decreased reliability of slopes dependent on natural snow, increased snowmaking requirements, shortened and more variable ski seasons, a contraction in the number of operating ski areas, altered competitiveness among and within regional ski markets, and attendant implications for ski tourism employment and values of vacation property real estate values. The extent and timing of these consequences depend on the rate of climate change and the types of adaptive responses by skiers as well as ski tourism destinations and their competitors. The need to understanding differential climate risk grows as investors and financial regulators increasingly require climate risk disclosure at the destination and company scale. Key knowledge gaps to better assist ski tourism destinations to adapt to future climate risk are identified.
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The demand for foresight on how climate change will alter the competitiveness of ski destinations continues to increase. Norway is often considered the country where modern skiing began, yet its ...climate change risk remains largely unknown. The SkiSim2 model is run with RCP 4.5 and 8.5 emission climate futures to analyse implications for ski season at 110 alpine ski areas in Norway in the 2030s, 2050s, and 2080s with only natural snow and with advanced snowmaking. A considerable shortening of the ski season in projected as early as the 2030s for the half of ski areas that currently lack snowmaking. Naturally snow reliable ski areas decline from approximately half in the 2030s to a third in the 2050s. With snowmaking, ski season losses are substantially reduced and the majority of ski areas remain snow reliable until the end of the twenty-first century in a lower emission future. A substantial shortening of the ski season (up to 40 days) nonetheless begins in the 2050s under a high emission scenario. The need to invest in snowmaking will continue to increase, with attendant financial and sustainability implications. The differential climate risk among five regions of Norway and the European Alps is also discussed.
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Regardless of the success of climate change mitigation efforts, the international community has concluded that societies around the world will need to adapt to some magnitude of climate change in the ...21st century. While some economic sectors (e.g., agriculture, water resources and construction) have been actively engaged in climate change adaptation research for years, adaptation has received scant consideration within the tourism-recreation industry. This is particularly the case for adaptation by tourism operators (supply-side). One exception where progress on supply-side climate adaptation has been made is the ski industry. This paper provides a brief overview of the literature on the implications of climate change for the international ski industry and how adaptation by ski area operators has been treated within these studies. This is followed by an inventory of climate adaptation practices currently used by ski industry stakeholders, including the historical development of certain key adaptations and constraints to wider use. The characteristics of ski areas with higher adaptive capacity are identified. Considering the highly competitive nature of the ski industry and the generally low climate change risk appraisal within the industry, climate change adaptation is anticipated to remain individualistic and reactive for some time. With only a few exceptions, the existing climate change literature on winter tourism has not considered the wide range of adaptation options identified in this paper and has likely overestimated potential damages. An important task for future studies is to develop methodologies to incorporate adaptation so that a more accurate understanding of the vulnerability of the international ski industry can be ascertained.
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CEKLJ, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Snowmaking has been an integral part of the multi-billion-dollar ski industry in most regional markets for more than 20 years and is one of the most visible and widespread forms of climate adaptation ...in the tourism sector. Under accelerating climate change, snowmaking is projected to increase at most destinations - some substantially. Snowmaking has come under increasing criticism in recent years and branded by some scholars and ski industry observers as unsustainable and maladaptive as a climate change response. Using data on snowmaking from across the diverse US ski market, this study assesses snowmaking against multiple established criteria that define maladaptation. The analysis demonstrates that snowmaking is highly place-context specific, varying at the individual operator and regional market scales, and represents a continuum from successful (and sustainable) adaptation to maladaptation. Regions of the US where snowmaking is most likely to be maladaptive are identified (water insecure and carbon intense electricity grids). The framework highlights the importance of scale and a tourism system perspective when assessing (mal)adaptation and provides decision-makers with a tool to evaluate the compatibility of snowmaking with climate action plans at the destination and regional scale.
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As climate change continues to impact the snowpack in ski areas globally, operators rely increasingly on snowmaking to maintain ski seasons and visitor experience. Increased reliance on machine-made ...snow has implications for the sustainability of ski tourism. This study provides the first national estimate of water, energy, and CO
2
emissions and projected changes under low (RCP2.6), mid (RCP4.5), and high emission (RCP8.5) climate futures by the 2050s. A central estimates of snowmaking efficiency found Canada currently uses 478,000 megawatts (MWh) of electricity (with 130,095 tonnes of associated CO
2
emission) and 43.4 million m
3
of water to produce over 42 million m
3
of technical snow. With snowmaking production requirements projected to increase between 55% and 97% by 2050 across low to high-emission climate futures, energy, and water use will increase proportionally. In contrast, future emissions associated with increased snowmaking would nonetheless decline substantially as provincial electricity grids are decarbonized under current policy targets. Regional differences in snowmaking requirements and emissions caused by provincial electricity-grid emission intensity and their important implications for ski tourism sustainability and snowmaking as (mal)adaptation are discussed.
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Skiing is an important part of Norwegian culture, but as climate change leads to warmer, more variable winters, the ski industry needs to adapt. Despite the growing literature on climate change ...impacts on ski tourism, adaptation options, particularly beyond snowmaking, barriers and the financial and visitor experience implications remain under-researched. Employing projections for future snow and snowmaking conditions, this paper investigates adaptive capacity among seven Western Norwegian ski resorts. Adaptive capacity is examined in terms of physical situation, technology, economic resources, innovative ability, networks and institutions. We find that smaller resorts make up for poor economic performance by drawing on local community support and by implementing innovative efforts to diversify income. Nonetheless, despite high adaptive capacity with respect to networks, institutions and innovative ability, increased snow production costs will make operations in three low-lying resorts unviable as early as the 2030s, with salient implications for winter tourism patterns, small community economies and future participation in the sport. The results also suggest that studies using snow production model projections that represents physical and technical adaptive capacity only, may be conservative in their estimated impact of future climate change.
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Tourism industry and government demand for knowledge of the impacts of climate change on ski tourism is growing. Despite the more than 70-year history and large cultural significance of alpine skiing ...in Sweden, little is known about the industry's future under a changing climate. This study applies the SkiSim2 model with low to high emission scenarios (RCP2.6 to 8.5) to analyse the implications of climate change for ski operations (season length, snowmaking requirements) at 23 alpine ski areas across Sweden for the early, mid and late twenty-first century. Northern areas of Sweden show much less reduction in average season length compared to central and southern Sweden under the high emission mid- (13% versus 58% and 81%) and late-century scenarios (27% versus 72% and 99%). To limit season losses in these scenarios, snow production increases of over 250% are required in all regions. Such increases will create additional financial and environmental stressors, which may lead to the closure of the most at-risk resorts. With greater impacts projected for much of the European Alps ski market, northern Sweden may represent a 'last resort' for the European ski industry under higher emission scenarios by the mid-late twenty-first century.
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Purpose
This paper aims to explore the important role boundaries play in back-office framing of environmental engagement. This is of particular interest because it is not clear how organizations in ...an industry without standardized environmental reporting navigate their boundaries behind the scenes and why they engage with the environment the way they do. This element of their environmental identity offers important insights into the emergence of sustainability reporting.
Design/methodology/approach
Guided by Miles and Ringham (2019) the authors conduct an ethnography of the Montana ski industry. The ethnography includes extensive on-site observations at nine Montana ski areas and interviews with 16 ski area executives, two regulators and a land development executive.
Findings
The authors find three key boundaries – accountability structure, degree of regulatory burden and impact measurement approach – that shape the back-office economic and environmental framing of ski executives (Goffman, 1959, 1974). From these back-office frames the authors identify four front-office cultural performances – community ecosystem, quantitative ownership, approval seeking and advocacy platform – that represent the environmental engagement strategies at these resorts.
Practical implications
Understanding the relationships between boundaries and environmental engagement is an important step in developing appropriate industry-wide environmental accountability and sustainability expectations. The study’s findings extend to other industries that are both highly dependent on the environment and are in the early stages of developing environmental reporting standards.
Originality/value
Ski resorts operate in an industry that is impacted by changes in the natural environment. The authors chronicle the process by which boundaries lead to framing which leads to environmental engagement in this weather-dependent industry. The authors explain the process of environmental identity building, the result of which both precedes environmental reporting and puts such reporting into context. In this sense, the authors show how boundaries are set and maintained in the ski resort industry, and how fundamental these boundaries are to the development of individual companies' environmental engagement strategies.
Previous research demonstrated Northern Sweden may have a future competitive climatic advantage over the European Alps for ski tourism, yet knowledge of climate change risk perceptions, adaptation, ...and mitigation strategies undertaken by the Swedish ski industry remains limited. This study combined top-down ski season modelling and bottom-up semi-structured interviews with Swedish ski industry stakeholders to examine changing market dynamics, climate change risk perceptions, and current and future adaptations under the backdrop of Sweden's potential climatic advantage. Findings indicate that despite a belief of having greater climate change recognition and preparedness than other international ski regions, stakeholders were reticent to link local conditions to anthropogenic climate change. Snowmaking was the most utilised adaptation option, and consistent with other regions was not explicitly seen as a climate change adaptation rather a prudent business decision. A gap between tourists' demand for increased resort sustainability and the actions of resorts was also evident in several locations. Market dynamics are also considered as capitalising on Sweden's potential climatic advantage will likely necessitate increased aviation travel and associated emissions, a potential barrier to the country's ability to become a 'last resort' for European skiing due to Sweden's ambitious, legally binding net-zero policy target of 2045.
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