Gustavo Romanillos (p), Borja Moya-Gómez, Irene Madrid-Muñoz

Elisa Panzera

With the aim of supporting this sustainable consumption, many Eco-certifications or Eco-labels schemes have been promoted worldwide over the past decades. These schemes are increasingly used to guarantee that goods and services are generated using high environmental standards, while communicating such guarantees to consumers, who, in turn, can make purchases that are more informed. Therefore, eco-certifications can be a potentially interesting market instrument to lower environmental impacts and, more generally, to push towards the green transition. Within the Tourism Sector, Tourism Accommodation Services are responsible for an important sustainable impact regarding aspects such as energy efficiency, water consumption, waste management and recycling, etc. For this reason, Tourism Accommodation Services are the focus of general and specific eco-certifications or eco-labels programs.
To the best of our knowledge, we lack a recent and systematic assessment of the existing eco-certification schemes focused on Tourism Accommodation Services. The main objective of this research is to create an inventory of existing eco-certifications schemes for the tourism accommodation sector in the European Union. The inventory systematically collects information on different aspects and characteristics to be analyzed regarding the different eco-certification schemes, such as date of establishment, service coverage, geographical coverage, scope, criteria considered, number of tourism establishments listed, reliability of scheme, compliance with ISO standards, or transparency. The inventory also includes a geographical database with the number of listings per eco-certification scheme at the highest possible spatial resolution. The purpose of this inventory is to build the bases for a comparative and systematic assessment of existing eco-certification schemes relevant for tourist accommodation services in the EU27, and a preliminary assessment is provided. Eventually, the inventory and the assessment aim to contribute to the development of a new Tourism Dashboard for the European Union.

David García-León (p)

Gustavo Romanillos

Changes in climatic conditions can pose considerable stress on tourism, bringing potentially large economic implications for one of the most important contributors to European GDP. In this paper we analyse the possible consequences of future climate change on tourism demand in the European Union’s regions. We build a historical statistical association between climate suitability indicators for tourism and tourism demand using panel data techniques and monthly data from 269 European NUTS2 regions over the 2000-2019 period. We considered two tourism suitability indicators, the Tourism Climate Index (TCI) and the Holiday Climate Index (HCI). Historical observations of these two indices were calculated using Copernicus’ ERA5-Land reanalysis data. In the historical analysis, we accounted for a set of socioeconomic characteristics in the destination regions, such as the level of GDP and the consumer price index. Other spatiotemporal controls were also included to capture additional geographic and seasonal patterns of tourism demand. Using a hierarchical clustering algorithm based on hotel location patterns and geographical criteria, we classified regions according to their main tourism typology, which provided additional insights on the impacts expected for different tourism categories. In the second part of this study, we analysed the expected impacts of climate change on tourism demand over the period 2020-2100 by considering projections of the TCI and HCI spanned from five regional climate models provided by the EURO-CORDEX initiative and two emission scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). We analysed the regional impacts projected at three specific global warming levels: the Paris Agreement targets (1.5°C and 2°C) and a higher warming level (3°C). Quantifying the economic costs of climate change impacts on tourism demand is determinant to better understand the level of possible regional losses in terms of growth and employment, and to provide key inputs to the policy debate on climate risks, mitigation, and adaptation.

Silvia Cerisola, Elisa Panzera (p)

David García-León

Cultural heritage and local attractiveness entertain a substantial and inextricable relationship. Cultural visitors and tourists are willing to discover and admire different, unique and outstanding forms of culture and local inhabitants recognize themselves in the symbolic meanings and values carried by their heritage that, also through its powerful role as a touristic attractor, inspires proudness and sense of belonging. Furthermore, cultural tourism represents an evident contributor to local economic conditions and a viable and effective resource to support cultural heritage maintenance and preservation costs. However, concerns related to excessive flows of tourists towards cultural destinations have been raised from many parts. In fact, overtourism might generate social, cultural, environmental, and economic costs, mainly affecting and damaging local communities. This paper aims at econometrically investigating the nexus between cultural tourism and regional economic development. A structural equation model is applied to Italian regional data in the attempt of simultaneously identifying the direct effects of cultural tourism on economic conditions as well as its indirect and potentially controversial effects.