Rethinking Winter Tourism in the Alps

In the Alpine region, the impacts of climate change are already tangible: rising temperatures, decreasing snow reliability, retreating glaciers, and more frequent extreme weather events are all threatening the foundations of the winter tourism economy. At the same time, maladaptive responses, such as an overdependence on artificial snowmaking or expanding infrastructure into ecologically sensitive areas, risk causing further environmental degradation without ensuring long-term resilience. The challenge is therefore to work towards formalising specific transition processes for Mountain Resorts, tailored to their territorial contexts, their vulnerabilities and their strengths.

This position paper, endorsed by several stakeholders including Euromontana, is based on the TranStat project and formulates policy recommandation at different level of gouvernance, from European scale to national and alpine scale.