Futures Studies for the Tourism Sector: Challenges, Experiences and Perspectives

Today’s societies face a broad spectrum of problems and challenges. Economic and social development deficits cumulate with ecological disasters and cultural decline and fragmentation. Tourism industry is one part of these changes that are going on in all countries on this planet, and it is highly affected by many of these changes – let me just mention climate change, terrorism, new technologies. At the same time scientific research and political management seem to be overridden by the dynamic complexities. As in other sectors of societies and economies these are challenging its ability to manage and make good and sound decisions. For a scientific approach or discipline like Future Studies (FS) this is a time of increased demand. This paper will be introduced by discussing some of these challenges and the implicit demand on support from Future Studies. The second chapter will give an overview of FS, its definition and elements, and discuss basic aspects of FS, its possibilities, limitations and some new tendencies in that academic field. In the major part of his paper, chapter three, the broad spectrum of methodology of Future Studies will be described and explained. It will be argued that FS is about “reduction of complexity ” and the “reduction of uncertainty”, in order to create a sounder bases for decision-makers and the society for action. But in order to be scientific those “processes of reduction ” have to be based on certain principles for scientific quality. An example will be presented. During the fourth and final chapter there will be a short reflection on the perspectives fo