Anthropogenic climate change is causing significant changes to the cryosphere. Glaciers and glacier tourism are directly impacted, and glacier tourism operators must adapt to the disappearance of their main resource. Recent studies carried out in this context have demonstrated that Last Chance Tourism (LCT) has emerged as the motivation behind viewing or visiting a natural resource before it disappears. The most frequently visited French glacier is Montenvers-Mer-de-Glace (1920 m a.s.l.), which is becoming a LCT destination. Results from both qualitative and quantitative methods demonstrate that visitors come to Montenvers mainly for its environmental features and for LCT purposes. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) shows that motivations can be classified into LCT and five other factors. Qualitative data identify ‘Fame’ as an unexpected motivational category, and different motivational dimensions of each category are explored. Concerning LCT motivation, four dimensions are revealed: observing, understanding, a sense of urgency, and witnessing environmental changes. Moreover, the more respondents are aware of climate change, the more they consider LCT motivations important. These results lead us to link LCT to cognitive dissonance. Finally, we propose that future research should explore LCT and its relationship with media coverage and pro-environmental behaviour.

Due To the effects of climate change, tourist locations such as glacial landscapes are increasingly becoming last-chance tourism (LCT) destinations. LCT is paradoxical: although visitors to such locations possess high environmental awareness, their travel generates greenhouse gas emissions that threaten these destinations. However, visiting LCT destinations and observing glacial landscapes threatened by climate change may positively affect pro-environmental behaviour. This article aims to explore how experiencing receding glaciers can influence intentions to adopt pro-environmental behaviour. A quantitative survey of 284 visitors to a major glacier tourism site in France (Montenvers-mer-de-Glace) was caried out to test the influence of landscape, emotions, satisfaction, and LCT-related motivations on intentions to adopt pro-environmental behaviours. The results show that landscapes perceived as symbolic of climate change, LCT motivations, and overall satisfaction positively influenced pro-environmental behaviour intentions. To further encourage such intentions, stakeholders should promote practices based on education and experience.

Globally, tourism is being deeply impacted by glacial retreat caused by climate change. However, research on stakeholders’ adaptation to climatic change and its threat to the industry on tourism niche is currently inadequate. Thus, through a literature review of 61 glacier peer-reviewed papers, this paper highlights the advancement in research on glacier tourism and provides some basis for understanding stakeholders’ adaptation strategies to climate change. The review shows that glacier tourism research publications increased between 2015 and 2020. It also identifies some impacts of climate change on the glacier tourism industry as well as 27 adaptation strategies to climatic change, which are classified under seven main themes: changes to access, activities, tourism planning, educational activities, temporal substitutions, spatial substitutions, and glacier shrinkage attenuation. We discuss the relevance of the resilience concept in the tourism industry and recommend that tourists’ experiences should be enhanced by applying the findings of research on tourists’ motivations and landscape perception and developing more adaptation-oriented research. The findings suggest that the glacier tourism industry can reduce its vulnerability to climate change through increased collaboration between tourism operators and climate and tourism researchers.

Europe accounts for 51% of international tourist arrivals and the tourism industry provides about 10% of workplaces in Europe. Tourism will be impacted by climate change in a diverse number of ways. At the same time, tourism is also a significant contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. The aim of this article is, therefore, to provide an assessment of climate and carbon risks for the European tourism industry based on a systematic literature review. Climate risk is the dominant category with 313 papers (74%), while 110 papers (26%) were on carbon risks. The following gaps were identified: geographical gaps, especially in countries of the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia; a lack of coherent studies on national tourism’s and its sub-sectors’ emissions; research addressing how climate policies might affect tourism demand; assessments of the integrated carbon and climate risks; lack of evidence on the link between tourism climate indicators and tourism demand; lack of climate change and tourism studies addressing policy and institutional tools for adaptation and implementation of adaptation measures in destinations; and research on rising sea levels and coastal erosion and its impacts on tourism destinations and demand.

Glacier tourism is an important form of travel in the Alps that is currently threatened by climate change. Previous studies have shown that glaciers are retreating worldwide, and media coverage has led to the development of last-chance tourism. However, few studies have focused on the European Alps, and glacier site visitors have not been segmented based on their motivations yet, hindering the understanding of different profiles. Therefore, using a latent class analysis, this study reveals that the 1330 survey respondents from six glacier tourism sites (Montenvers, Nid d’Aigle, Glacier Blanc, Rhône Glacier, Aletsch Glacier, and Franz–Josefs–Höhe/Pasterze) in three alpine countries (France, Switzerland, and Austria) can be segmented into four classes based on their motivations and other factors. Among them, the “last chance” and “climate visitor” classes were identified, representing between 50% and 57% of the respondents from the investigated sites. The results also indicate that visitors’ motivations are stable across sites and that glaciers are the object of last-chance tourism. This research contributes to the fields of glacier tourism and last-chance tourism by proposing a segmentation of visitors and allowing the generalisation of the presence of last-chance tourism for glacier tourism sites in the Alps.