Adaptation and diversification of tourism offers

Adapting and diversifying the tourism offer is not possible without cooperation with and support of diverse stakeholders. A participatory process is crucial to create a common vision and to solve potential conflicts from the beginning. Bringing together stakeholders with different experiences and backgrounds (e.g. tourism economic operators, cruising companies, public transport providers, providers of cultural events, environmental and cultural heritage associations, local producers of food, municipalities) can also foster innovative ideas and avoid maladaptive outcomes.  

Involving tourists (e.g., by conducting a survey or interviews) helps to better understand their needs and expectations. It is equally important to consider the needs of local residents, especially of vulnerable groups, as the diversification of the tourism offer should benefit both tourists and local residents. Diversification should ideally also contribute to the conservation of nature. Therefore, exchange with relevant stakeholders (e.g., protected areas managers and local authorities with responsibility on environmental protection) is needed to encourage synergies and to avoid that new conflicts emerge from diversification proposals.

In general, a broad participation process is the basis to ensuring the successful diversification and adaptation of the tourism offer.

Adapting and diversifying the tourism offer is a challenging task, as there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution, and what has worked in one destination does not necessarily work in another. A key factor for successful diversification is the involvement of all affected stakeholders to increase the acceptance of the strategy and build support for the implementation. Another key factor is creating collaboration initiatives with other providers of tourism services at the regional scale, to create synergies and avoid competing offer. Moreover, it is proposed to follow a systematic approach including the following steps:

• Stocktaking of existing offers and target groups
• Assessing impacts of climate change and other future developments on tourism offer and demand
• Analyse Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) of the current tourism offer  
• Strategy Development (focus on addressing the challenges and using new opportunities)
• Implementation
• Monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL)
• Marketing and communication.

Challenges for successful adaptation and diversification of tourism are the creation of close collaboration initiatives with other sectors, that are often needed to the cross-cutting character of the tourism sector. To avoid maladaptive outcomes, it is important to consider the advantages and disadvantages of different diversification strategies in the local context. Diversification can have various positive benefits if it supports a shift towards more sustainable tourism offers, e.g. by involving locally owned businesses. However, it can be hindered by the lack of motivated, skilled and future-looking operators, and by a general lack of awareness about the impacts of climate change on the tourism sector.

Costs can be a considerable barrier to the implementation of this option, but various funding opportunities on the EU level, as well as on the national and sub-national level can support adaptation and diversification in the tourism sector. The Guide on EU funding for tourism can help tourism stakeholders to find suitable EU funding programmes.

The costs of diversification can vary considerably, and can be high if new infrastructures are needed. Adapting and re-using existing tourism infrastructures can therefore be a strategy to reduce costs. For example, a municipality in the Allgäu Alps used a former snowmaking pond to create a “water climbing park”.

Benefits of a diversified tourism offer include a competitive advantage compared to low diversified destinations and a higher flexibility to respond to changes in demand. Moreover, negative social and environmental impacts of tourism could be reduced by sustainable diversification that can instead create opportunities for the valorisation and promotion of cultural and environmental heritage. This includes for example creating new paths for less visited areas, promotion of eco-museums, organisation of guided tours to showcase environmental features etc. Economic benefits could be realised by increasing linkages between tourism and local businesses, for example organising markets to promote regional  food or hand-made craft (see for example the case study on lionfish in Cyprus). Whenever diversification of tourism offer is informed by climate change considerations, it can help to avoid economic losses in the tourism sector over the long-term. Additional benefits include awareness raising for the vulnerability of tourism destinations to climate change, and potentially also behavioural changes of tourists and the local population.  

Since tourism is a cross-cutting sector, different legal aspects might be relevant for the diversification and adaptation of the tourism offer (e.g., Directive 76/160/EEC in relation to bathing water, Directive 92/43/EEC for the conservation of natural habitats). The diversification of tourist supply, through capitalizing on Europe’s common cultural heritage is recommended in the EC communication “Europe, the world's No 1 tourist destination – a new political framework for tourism in Europe” (COM(2010) 352 final). Diversification is also recalled in the EC communication “A European Strategy for more Growth and Jobs in Coastal and Maritime Tourism” (COM(2014) 86 final) through promoting transnational thematic itineraries like cultural, religious or ancient trade routes.

Diversification is a long-term and dynamic process, as it requires to flexibly adapt to changing circumstances. The implementation time of a specific measure will vary depending on the scope and complexity of the project, the legal framework, the availability of financial resources, and the level of stakeholder engagement.

Ideally, this adaptation option represents a long-term strategy to deal with climate change. The key to a long life time is to develop offers which enable to maintain the flexibility to react to changing climatic but also socio-cultural circumstances.