Last year, we joined forces with Leeds Beckett University School of Events, Hospitality and Tourism Management, to explore what practical support is needed for tourism destinations to create climate action plans, and to investigate the challenges and enablers for climate action.  We interviewed representatives from 24 tourism destinations across Europe, Africa and the Americas.  The resulting report called ‘Tourism Destination Climate Action, the Enabling Environment’ was released this month, for more information click here.  Our aim now is to use the outputs from the research to input into a broader funding application to help support Climate Action Plan development across destinations.

Some of the key barriers highlighted by destinations involved in the research included a lack of understanding of the sphere of influence of destinations, a lack of clear climate policies and regulation, the large number of stakeholders involved, lack of funds and lack of skills.  The enablers that emerged included strong partnerships, effective communication, integrated governance, as well as having a clear mandate and the availability of resources, case studies and templates.

In light of the results, the next stages of the project will aim to explore further aspects of: a) communicating climate change to and by tourism stakeholders and b) ways to develop meaningful knowledge exchange mechanisms which will enable development, sharing and facilitation of innovative systems and flows of knowledge exchange in the context of climate change and tourism.

The summary results can be seen in our infographic below.