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1. Introduction
The aim of this study is to define the vulnerability of Swiss tourism to climate change, to analyse its causes, its magnitude and its spatial heterogeneity. Often stakeholders guess the large transformations that climate change could bring to the current tourism structure. People on the field are the first to detect landscape and climate transformations and changes in tourism behaviour. However, often climate change is placed on a lower priority level than other, more direct, threats to business. This work wants to raise stakeholders’ awareness and attention on the many challenges that the sector is already facing and will face in the future because of climate change. A higher consciousness of the problem, together with a higher awareness of the environmental impacts of the sector, could be a first step towards the beginning of a sustainable adaptation process in the different – and in particular in the more affected – regions. This study does not want to give a precise estimation of the risks that the different regions are going to face. Doing this is still difficult because of data gaps and the lack of an objective assessment of the relative importance of the impacts. Results should give an idea of what could be:
- the most important drivers influencing vulnerability,
- spatial heterogeneity in vulnerability,
- hotspots - areas where the implementation of adaptation measures is more crucial,
- similarities existing among regions, and
- data gaps. Fields in where more research should be carried out.
This wiki aims, therefore, at being more a tool that allows stakeholders to compare results with their own subjective perceptions of vulnerability in their region, and that encourages them to discuss and share information.