Trends in winter sport tourism: challenges for the future

Trends in winter sport tourism: challenges

for the future

Wiebke Unbehaun, Ulrike Pro¨bstl and Wolfgang Haider

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to survey climate change impacts on winter sport tourists’

activity and destination choice, to estimate shifts in customer demand and to provide recommendations

and decision support for destination management.

Design/methodology/approach – A total of 540 skiers from Vienna, Austria were surveyed with a

standardized online questionnaire. The survey also contained a discrete choice experiment a stated

preference method which forces respondents into trade-off behavior between various possible

combinations of destination profiles.

Findings – The results show a strong preference for destination attributes promising sufficient (natural)

snow conditions. In winters that lack snow, resorts in high destinations gain importance and travel

distances lose some relevance. A large proportion of skiers would forgo skiing if it becomes more

expensive. Snow independent substitutes are accepted as a short time compensation but not for the

whole winter holiday. When asked to trade off additional costs and additional travel distances for a snow

secure destination, the majority of winter sport tourists are willing to incur some additional cost but the

majority reach thresholds at about 10 percent additional cost and 2h additional driving.

Originality/value – The survey shows, that a discrete choice experiment is a suitable method to cover

the complexity of activity and destination choice. Therefore it is an unique individual-oriented approach

to consider customer demand and to evaluate the success of offer setting in tourism management. The

sequential presentation of three related choice sets is a novel contribution in the field of choice

experiments, and appears to be well suited to simulate climate change-related effects.

Keywords Sports, Global warming, Consumer behaviour, Austria

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

In many Austrian regions winter tourism is an important source of income. Therefore they are

highly dependent on satisfactory snow conditions. The lack of snow during several recent

winters provided many alpine ski destinations a first glimpse of the potential impacts of

climate change. The question arises, how different types of winter sport enthusiasts react to

changing skiing conditions caused by climate change and how attractive snow independent

substitutes might be. To pursue this question, a survey of Viennese skiers and boarders was

conducted with an online questionnaire. The application of a discrete choice experiment

secures an individual oriented approach that takes the preferences of skiers and boarders

into account and helps to identify the importance of a large set of attributes for the

destination choice process. The result of the inquiry aims to evaluate future options for winter

(sport) tourism management.

Winter tourism in the European Alps is highly dependent on snow based winter sport. At the

end of the 1980s, a period of several winters lacking snow gave the alpine communities a

first idea of what climate change could mean for regions dependent on winter sport tourism.

In the winter of 2006/2007, the tourism branch was confronted with a serious decline of

bookings of about 25 percent. The lack of snow at the preparation phase of one of the major

PAGE 36 j TOURISM REVIEW j VOL. 63 NO. 1 2008, pp. 36-47, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1660-5373 DOI 10.1108/16605370810861035

Wiebke Unbehaun and

Ulrike Pro¨bstl are based at

the University of Natural

Resources and Applied Life

Sciences Vienna, Institute

for Transport Studies,

Vienna, Austria.

Wolfgang Haider is based

at the School of Resource

and Environmental

Management, Simon Fraser

University Vancouver,

Burnaby, Canada.