Climate Implications for Tourism

Vacation, travel, and leisure are being affected by longer periods of higher temperatures. While the city of Scottsdale, Arizona, is marketing its intense heat as a tourism draw, extreme heat is making national park visits riskier, and outdoor concerts and festivals are seeing higher rates of hospitalizations for heat stroke and exhaustion.

In Canada, wildfires and smoke are jeopardizing the country's tourism economy, and higher winter temperatures are threatening ski resorts and winter-based tourism around the world. Planners in tourism-dependent economies will need to help their communities prepare for the coming changes.