Natural Disasters, Climate Change, and Tourism Panel Discussion

Tourism, an economic sector of great global importance, faces a “trifecta” of challenges given its propensity towards locations that are densely populated and susceptible to extreme weather events that will be exacerbated by climate change. While climate change is a global problem, its impacts will manifest differently at the local scale and will likely necessitate responses that are specific to individual tourism communities. Subsequently, efforts to increase resilience for tourism destinations should be strongly tied to efforts to build their communities’ resilience, as some of the factors that increase community resilience have also been shown to increase the resilience of the tourism sector