Climate change impacts tourism, since both supply and demand of tourism services depend on the quality and the management of a set of environmental attributes. This paper critically reviews the empirical evidence in the literature of the last twenty years (2000–2019), by identifying the potential impacts of climate change in coastal and maritime destinations. The concept of Impact Chains is the methodological framework through which the literature is systematically selected, classified and assessed. A great heterogeneity of results is found, with estimates of physical and socio-economic impacts of climate change differing across destinations and methodologies. Moreover, the majority of recent studies mainly deals with only a few of the most important impacts, hence future research should be re-directed to overlooked indicators and relationships, which are key for designing effective climate policies at tourism destinations.

Managing environmental attributes of the tourist product is increasingly important for the success of tourist destinations. The authors consider how producers manage environmental attributes in the hotel industry. An environmental quality index is formulated, based on the possible environmental measures a representative unit can adopt, given the technological frontier. Several aspects of environmental quality within the hotel's influence are considered, such as the management of energy, water, solid waste, noise, and urban landscape. These measures can have effects on costs and demand. Thus their adoption represents an opportunity for firms to raise net benefits. Empirical evidence comes from a sample of hotels and apartments in Gran Canaria. Results show that the most frequently adopted environmental measures are those involving low investment and operational cost reductions. The environmental quality index is significantly determined by the category of the facilities, production capacity, integration into a larger management chain, the environmental perception of managers, and the preoccupation of clients with the environment.

Evidence of tourism as a strategy to empower local communities around national parks remains elusive. Scholars argue that a prerequisite to empowering community members is to decipher their ideas, beliefs and perceptions. Social representations (SR) theory provides a framework to engage in such a task yet very few studies have taken on such analysis. The paper presents a study of the SR across 10 communities surrounding the Langue de Barbarie National Park in Senegal using survey and interview data. Specifically, we examine their representations towards tourism and the park as a basis to better inform their empowerment process. We conducted a cluster analysis, grouping community members responses into polemical, emancipated, and hegemonic representations. Most participants held polemical representations and perceived tourism and the park as a continuity of colonialism. Others with emancipated representations advocated for alternative tourism structures. The hegemonic representations on the other hand assessed tourism based on the direct impact it provides to individual members of their communities. For each cluster, we propose a form of empowerment that is better aligned with their social representations as a catalyst for their capacity to carve a meaningful space in tourism.

Whale watching has long been marketed as a whale conservation-oriented form of sustainable tourism. However, inappropriate management practices are endangering whales, the marine environment, and the tourist experience. This situation highlights the need for more responsible and sustainable actions to reconcile whale protection with the various demands of tourists. This paper analyses consumers’ preferences for socially responsible and green solutions for sustainable whale-watching management in tourism. A discrete choice experiment and a latent class segmentation are utilised to evaluate heterogeneity in tourists’ preferences regarding the implementation of various measures of responsible sustainability by the whale-watching firm. Results show that there are two groups of tourists with different preferences and economic values for sustainability policies: sustainability-oriented (34.96%) and consumption-oriented tourists (65.04%). The group of sustainability-oriented tourists have a greater preference for full corporate social responsibility and technologically innovative solutions for locating whale populations, thereby reducing the ecological and environmental impacts. The group of consumption-oriented tourists is more in line with traditional preferences, focusing on the enjoyment of the whale-watching experience through the effective management of crowding effects. Although the sustainability-oriented tourist segment has a smaller market share, the results suggest that there is market potential for increasing responsible sustainability practices in the whale-watching tourism activity.