Scenarios for skiing tourism in Austria: integrating demographics with an analysis of climate change

Skiing tourism is an important income source in Austria. The future development of skiing tourism is essential for Austria's rural and peripheral areas and their socio-cultural and economic wellbeing, and relevant for the entire Austrian economy. Though a number of factors driving tourism development can be found in the scientific literature, studies on the future of skiing tourism are largely restricted to the potential impacts of climate change. In this paper, potential impacts on the ski tourism industry in Austria caused by climate change and demographic changes were compared. Demographic changes were found to have a higher impact on skiing tourism than climate change in the first half of the twenty-first century, while climate change could be the more dominant driving force towards the end of the century. Demographic changes include population declines in source countries, and a trend to ageing populations. Other complicating factors include possible developments in snowmaking technology and also rising energy/transport costs resulting from climate change mitigation measures. Thus, the tourism industry is required to diversify its product portfolio and foster snow-linked and snow-independent tourism activities that are attractive for older age groups.