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Contribution short abstract:

To better understand the social ecology of tourism, the input advocates a regional history perspective. Two hundred years of tourism development in the alpine region of Salzburg (Austria) allow to evaluate past and explore new pathways of tourism in terms of their (non-)sustainability.

Contribution long abstract:

To understand tourism as a phenomenon of high socioecological impact, a regional perspective is helpful. Using the example of the Austrian state of Salzburg, I want to introduce a case study as an input to the roundtable, which outlines the different historical development paths of tourism in the region and questions them in the historical retrospective on their socio-ecological (non-)sustainability. Tracing two hundred years of development offers a broad range of evidence both for urban and rural tourism in the alpine region. While Salzburg city is listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site and specializes in high quality culture tourism the city faces a bundle of problems also known for other tourism hot spots: ‘overtourism’ by daily visitors, ‘airbnbfication’ and the connected problems for permanent residents to access affordable housing etc. The alpine countryside hosts other forms of tourism and therefore faces other sustainability problems: Travellers mainly arrive by individual car traffic, causing a high carbon footprint and demanding for elaborate infrastructure (streets, parking grounds etc.) even in fragile high alpine surroundings. Also wintertourism is responsible for the development and maintenance of an ever more complex infrastructure, while climate change threatens ever more ski resorts in their operation. In the discussion this account provides a basis for evaluating past development pathways of tourism and explore potentially more sustainable new ones.

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Contribution short abstract:

The distinction between weak and strong sustainability are used in this contribution to understand better the environmental history of the winter tourism industry in the Alps since the 1970s.

Contribution long abstract:

Sustainability has been on everyone’s lips since the Brundlandt Report in 1987. Hundreds of meanings of the term now exist, many of which are just a label to better market products and services. The tourism industry is no exception, which raises the question of the concept’s usefulness.

One way out of this dilemma is to differentiate between weak and strong sustainability. The first approach states that even environmentally harming activities are sustainable if capital gains are recorded in the social and economic spheres. The second approach prioritizes ecology over society and the economy as the basis of all human well-being.

Referring to winter mass tourism as one of the most criticized forms of Alpine tourism, I will discuss the impact of the environmental movement of the 1970s and 1980s on the development of the industry. At first, it seemed as if this could bring a trend reversal. However, winter tourism entrepreneurs quickly learned to label any of their activities as sustainable. This “weak sustainability” was realized by:

1. detaching tourist infrastructure from the overall questions of fossil-energy-based mobility,

2. promoting qualitative instead of quantitative growth,

3. framing ecological issues as technical questions.

From a strong sustainability perspective, however, it must be said that any winter tourism destination can only be as sustainable as the least sustainable element of the entire value chain and this is currently the transportation system that brings tourists to the Alps.

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Contribution short abstract:

Material (as opposed to merely ideal) factors in tourism sustainability are an important analytical category. Focussing on water in tourism sustainability acknowledges tourism as culturally, socially and physical-materially hybridized phenomenon that eludes direct sustainability assessments.

Contribution long abstract:

In terms of international tourist visits, the Mediterranean is the world's largest tourist destination. In the Mediterranean climate, with mild winters and hot, dry summers, water demands from tourism, the urban and agricultural sectors peak at the time of highest water deficit and elaborated water storage and distribution infrastructure dates back to medieval times. In the Balearic Islands, a quarter of the total water consumption is attributable to the tourism sector. The Balearic Island Mallorca is a tourism power on its own and its continued economic success shows in an average 5% growth rate in tourist arrivals (1960-2021) despite multiple crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic. This contribution introduces Mallorca as a socio-natural site of water resource use between scarcity and competing demands. Combined with hotel tourist water use, the strategic move towards a higher quality tourist model with less seasonality adds to the high tourist water use. Water supply relies heavily on groundwater and seawater desalination has been used since 1994 to satisfy urban and tourist water demand. Reviewing the most recent analyses of the development of water-demanding tourist practices provides evidence that water consumption associated to tourism may become a threat to water availability. Moving beyond a case study, the contribution seeks to discuss the complex materialities of tourism, acknowledging that the material (as opposed to merely ideal) factors in tourism sustainability are an important analytical category. Focussing on water in tourism sustainability opens research pathways to analyse tourism as culturally, socially and physical-materially hybridized phenomenon that eludes direct sustainability assessments.

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Contribution short abstract:

Evidence of territorial changes in the environmental history of the Balearic Islands helps to diagnosing future scenarios: e.g. luxury tourism vs. solidarity tourism, linking the objectives of environmental and social justice in terms of fair tourism degrowth.

Contribution long abstract:

The recent environmental history of mass tourist destinations based on sun and beach model show trends of change due to the overlap of eco-social chronic crises: climate change, energy scarcity, biodiversity loss, desperate migratory flows, etc. The analysis of the Balearic case allows us to glimpse, at least, two future scenarios in this context: on the one hand, cap growth in terms of tourists flows but towards its elitization, through the redesign of the urban environment, so dealing to a process of gentrification; and on the other hand, the growing demand to apply regulatory frameworks that put a limit on the per capita throughput of energy, materials or water, in order to make tourism more sustainable and equitable. This last scenario is based on linking the objectives of environmental and social justice in terms of fair tourism degrowth.

Firstly, this contribution will present evidences of economic, social, environmental and territorial changes of the environmental history of the Balearic Islands, aimed to enrich the debate on the sustainability of tourism. Secondly, the aim is to contribute to the diagnosis of the pros and cons of both future scenarios, which are already put into practice in case studies, e.g., in terms of luxury tourism, on the one hand, and social and solidarity tourism, on the other.

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Contribution short abstract:

The contribution tracks past transformations of tourism and long-distance mobility in Poland using mobility biographical interviews and statistics. It highlights the drivers of unsustainable changes and provides lessons for the future.

Contribution long abstract:

My short presentation at the roundtable will reflect on the transformation that tourism and long-distance mobility in Poland have undergone since the 1960s. It will be based on interview data on mobility biographies conducted in late 2023 with people from four generations and statistics documenting a socio-technical transformation of the sector. I will track past negative trends and their drivers and provide lessons for the future, such as practices that could be recovered or ideas on preventing further unsustainable changes. In my contribution, I will also provide a perspective on the role of tourism and long-distance travel in satisfying human needs and the processes that escalate the amounts of energy and materials required to satisfy the same needs (i.e., a need satisfier escalation).

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Contribution short abstract:

This contribution brings up contested histories of outdoor recreation in Sweden and stresses the importance of accomodating experiences of historically marginalized communities and patterns of structural inequality in addressing sustainbility of nature-based activities.

Contribution long abstract:

This contribution offers a historicized perspective on the practices of outdoor recreation in Sweden and their inextricable connection to colonial and nation-building projects. Bringing into the conversation stories and experiences of historically marginalized groups, it unpacks patterns of social inequality in nature and traces the transformation of Sami homelands into Swedish welfare landscapes. As the recreational infrastructures built "by men, for men" spread across the indigenous lands, the Sami mobilities and land-use became increasingly limited due to multiple developmental pressures, including tourism. Genderization, racialization and modernization of northern nature subsequently shaped the Swedish welfare landscapes, bringing revenues from extractive practices of nature exploitation, including tourism.

Exploring structural inequalities in access, mobility and agency rights in natural landscapes can help understand the historical path-dependencies in recreational land-planning and reveal socially and environmentally unsustainable patters. The current challenges of mitigating climate crisis and land-use conflicts call for a renegotiation of governance patterns and demand a deeper understanding and sensitivity for the matter. In that process, acknowledgement of historical injustices and generational traumas of belonging is one of the keys to reconciling different views on nature and its meanings and developing new, decolonised regimes of sustaining recreational spaces based on inclusivity, equality and mutual consent.