Climate and Tourism

Interview with Dr. Lóránt Dávid college professor

Experts claim that climate change might redraw the touristic map of the world. We have asked Dr. Lóránt Dávid college professor about the relationship between tourism and climate and his research on sustainable tourism.

The Head of the Department of Tourism and Regional Development of the Károly Róbert College has told us that this theme gets high emphasis in education, too.

What do we mean by sustainable tourism?

The sustainability of tourism is a twofold responsibility: we have to secure the long-term preservation of attractions and meanwhile guarantee the return of the capital of entrepreneurs investing in tourism, and the improvement of the results of their company. Sustainable tourism should be ecologically tolerable and economically feasible on the long run, while being ethically and socially fair to local residents. Relationships among tourists, catering communities, enterprises, attractions and the environment is complex, interactive and symbiotic at the same time. It clearly follows from the above that acceptable conservation and a touristic product of better quality can result from the sustainable management of resources.

How is this field of research incorporated into education? What courses should students interested in it choose?

Naturally, research in sustainable tourism is a priority topic in education, several subjects deal with it in detail. I would recommend Touristic Resources, Ecotourism, Health Tourism, and the System and Economics of Tourism to those who are interested.

Where will the effects of climate change be most intensely felt?

Ecotourism will obviously be affected, as it is sensitive to any kind of change, being a nature-based touristic product. As regards waterside recreation, we can expect the Mediterranean to become too hot, to which the increasing duration of sunshine will also contribute, while the season suitable for bathing will become shorter there and longer and more stable here by our lake Balaton, due to the more rapid increase of its sensed temperature as compared to the increase in air temperature (which will still be favourable here). Naturally, this can only be exploited with adequate development of the infrastructure. Climate change may even have a favourable impact on city tourism in a certain respect, as warming expands the early spring and late autumn periods that can be exploited well, and shortens the duration of unfriendly grey-black snow cover in cities, etc. Meanwhile, days of heat can also be an obstacle to city programs.

In the area of health tourism, we intend to concentrate on prognosing changes of tourist traffic in thermal and climatic health resorts. The former comes to the focus of the problem studied due to the continuing decrease of seasonality, while the latter is interesting because of the increasing number of allergic cases those results from drought.

How will climate change affect tourism in Hungary?

Although none of the scenarios that have been published lists Hungary among the highly threatened areas, and some sources even count on the increase of tourism by a small percentage, we can be certain that if the effects of climate change will have an impact on tourism, this will be realised in the waterside and mountain areas in the first place. Thus we have to prepare for the prevention of problems in riverside and lakeside resorts.