Paper 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.

Paper 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.