Emmanuel SALIM, Edytem, Univ. Savoie-Mont-Blanc, CNRS, France
During more than two centuries, glaciers across the Alps has been visited for their aesthetic value leading some of them to become emblematic of alpine tourism. This emblematic status of glacier for tourism led numerous infrastructures to be developed to facilitate their access: cog railway, cable-car, high altitude touristic road are some examples, bringing hundreds of thousand visitors every year. However, current climate change and the rapid melting of alpine glaciers (Sommer et al., 2020) lead this tourism niche to be highly at risk. This is particularly true regarding changes in the glacier landscape and their potential effects on the site’s attractiveness (Welling et al., 2015). The issue of the effects of downwasting glaciers on tourism lead glacier tourism operators to be concerned and in demand for research support. Accordingly, a PhD project started in October 2018 to understand climate change implications for glacier tourism in the Alps.
As this PhD has been defended in December 2021, the aim of this e-poster is to present and discuss an overview of the research questions and results obtained. This research was conducted with the aim to assess the evolution of glacier tourism from the supply and demand side perspectives. Different qualitative and quantitative methods were carried out in six glacier sites in France, Switzerland and Austria. From the supply-side perspective, the results show that tourism operators are being impacted by the different processes arising from climate change. Impacts of glacial fluctuations have been observed since the beginning of tourism, but the current impacts are more intense and frequent. Although adapting, the future of glacier tourism in an ice-free world is uncertain. From the demand perspective, glacier retreat makes glaciers the support of last chance tourism. Despite landscape change, visitor satisfaction remains high and seeing the glacial landscape could be a lever to encourage pro-environmental behaviour.
Mots clés : Climate Change|Adaptation|Glacier tourism|Last chance tourism|Mountain
A103547ES