The tourism industry in southern Mediterranean countries could be under threat due to climate change, lowering tourism revenues by up to 0.45 per cent of the GDP per year, an EU study has warned.
The report’s predictions are focused on the year 2100, when the already scorching hot average summer temperature is estimated to rise by two degrees Celsius.
While the paper, titled ‘Time is of the essence: adaptation of tourism demand to climate change in Europe’, does not name Malta, it highlights southern Mediterranean countries as the biggest losers.
It identifies Spain, Bulgaria, France, Italy and Portugal as the countries that will suffer the most from lowered tourism, particularly during the summer season.
On the contrary, other areas of the EU, most notably northern European regions, would gain from altered climatic conditions. Tourists will instead prefer to visit countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia and Austria, the paper predicts.
However, these gains would be relatively more modest, reaching 0.32 per cent of the GDP on an annual basis at most.
According to the Malta Resources Authority, small islands like Malta, and the entire Mediterranean Basin, are particularly vulnerable to climate change. This is due to the combined effect of a high temperature increase and reduced precipitation, particularly in a region already coping with water scarcity.
The tourism sector in southern Europe would probably lower its prices in order to compensate for the expected reduction in tourists’ demand due to the temperature rise, the paper says. Changing ‘comfort zone’ temperature levels could also result in a change on when and how often we take our holidays in the future.
Tourists might begin distributing their holiday pattern “more evenly during the year and take shorter holidays in order to benefit, for instance, from more clement weather conditions during the other seasons.”
Climate change is defined as a durable change in weather patterns. The change may be related to changes in mean weather conditions, range of weather conditions (such as higher maximum temperatures) and distribution (such as fewer but stronger rain showers).
Climate change is a process which may be caused by a number of factors including natural (geologic, oceanographic and atmospheric events such as volcanic eruptions) and human-induced factors, the most relevant of which is the emission of greenhouse gases through human processes such as the burning of fossil fuels.