This article originally appeared in BSR Insight.
Perhaps no other industry is more dependent on climate than travel and tourism. From warm, sunny, beachfront resorts, to majestic, snowy mountains, and turbulence-free flights, nearly every aspect of the industry is better off and more profitable when the weather is stable and predictable, and travelers can move about safely and without disruption.
According to a 2008 study by the UN World Travel Organisation, tourism will likely move toward higher latitudes and altitudes, where negative climate change impacts will not be as drastic. If that happens, the competitive position of vacation spots will change, leaving some areas to decline as others become more popular.
Climate change is also predicted to result in greater weather volatility and related risks to infrastructure. Increased costs, primarily for fuel, will lead to corresponding erosion of consumer demand for travel, and longer-term shifts in weather and climate will affect the value of different destinations. Apart from these direct impacts, climate change will indirectly affect biodiversity, water resources, and changes to the landscape.
These changes, coupled with the ripple effects on communities (including the possibility of destabilization in developing countries), will impact many aspects of popular travel destinations. High-volume hotel and resort destinations will experience increasingly erratic weather, water scarcity, and changes in seasonality. The stakes are particularly high for coastal and island destinations, which are more vulnerable to rising sea level, hurricanes, severe storms, flooding, water shortages, and beach erosion. And many of these regions
GCC News Brief 
Posted on August 9, 2011