Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) within the tourism sector play crucial yet often underestimated roles in climate change mitigation, contributing to approximately half of the sector's greenhouse gas emissions. Although the existing literature has examined barriers to climate change action and potential drivers for the involvement of small firms, these aspects have not been comprehensively explored within the context of tourism. The article addresses this gap by conducting a narrative review that analyzes 78 papers and reports published on the topic. The results substantiate a differentiation among barriers, pressures, and incentives. Barriers encompass aspects related to knowledge and personality, understanding and perceptions, management, data, finances, technology, legislation, and community. Pressures originate from costs, customer expectations, and compliance. Incentives manifest in economic considerations, subsidies, marketing strategies, staff benefits, and community advantages. The findings are synthesized into a series of conceptualizations, offering pathways for progress on mitigation. Findings emphasize the significance of legislation and efforts of destination management organizations for accelerating SME engagement with climate change.

As AI applications begin to penetrate tourism, there is a growing need to better understand the opportunities and risks AI poses to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To address this, the paper combines a narrative review of the literature for the years 2019-2024 (n = 148 papers) with three targeted queries of ChatGPT, an advanced language model developed by OpenAI. Queries explore how AI is currently used in tourism, its future applications, and the risks associated with its use in achieving the SDGs. Findings suggest that most linkages highlighted in the academic literature are positive, speculative, generic, and optimistic. In comparison, the interrelationships highlighted by ChatGPT suggest greater complexity, ambiguity, contradictions, trade-offs, and effects across scales that have relevance for the individual SDGs. This paper is the first to provide a more systematic overview of AI and sustainable tourism interrelationships and lays out the connections between the various SDG dimensions that will be affected. This provides the groundwork for more targeted empirical research.

Air transport is energy-intense, and considerable attention has been paid to the sector's use of fuel and emissions of greenhouse gases. Commercial aviation is believed to currently emit about 1 Gt CO2 per year, if considering global bunker fuel use (scope 1 in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol). A growing database is becoming available on scope 1-3 emissions; this is, including up- and downstream emissions, and it is now possible to assess the aviation system's carbon intensity more comprehensively. This paper investigates the annual reports of 26 of the largest airlines in the world by market capitalisation, finding that reporting on emissions for scopes 1-3 is still inconsistent and characterised by reporting gaps. Yet, available data suggests that scope 3 emissions are significant (about 30% of scope 1 emissions). These findings have repercussions for the sector's net-zero ambitions, climate governance, consumer choices and air transport finance, as the overall contribution from air travel to climate change remains underestimated. Results suggest that it is in the sector's interest to present robust, transparent, consistent and accurate emission inventories - and to engage with the implications.

As the international community gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan at the 29th United Nations climate conference (COP-29) tourism holds a new place of prominence, being included in the host Presidency strategic agenda for the first time. The series of initiatives and high-level meetings culminated in the Baku Declaration on Enhanced Climate Action in Tourism. This is the fifth such declaration by the tourism sector over the past two decades. This paper examines to what extent the tourism sector has delivered outcomes related to 38 actionable climate pledges identified in previous declarations. A visible gap exists between pledges and performance, with limited to no demonstrable progress found on 25 climate action pledges. Time is the enemy, and the tourism sector must move beyond ambition to produce results at scale to stabilize and reduce emissions and build climate resilience. The Baku Declaration, endorsed by 69 countries and 9 non-state actors, does not provide a robust programme of action to accelerate progress on past climate action pledges that have gone unfulfilled. The launch of a new UN led global partnership mechanism to catalyze climate action holds more prospect but will need to overcome barriers that led to inertia following past Declarations.

A growing number of older adults have the financial means to travel extensively. This expanding travel market could have significant climate implications, as older travellers often prefer energy-intensive tourism, such as cruises. To explore the consequences of this trend, this paper examines the current and planned travel behaviours of a representative sample of the Boomer generation in Germany. The analysis is based on data from Reiseanalyse, an annual survey of 7,259 Germans, and a Norstat survey of 1,101 older German adults. Findings reveal a complex picture: A significant portion of retirees lacks the financial means to travel, while travel intensity declines with age, with a marked decrease after age 75. Averaged across the population, retirees have a smaller carbon footprint from travel than those still in the workforce. Although these factors suggest tourism emissions will decline as the population ages, this trend may reverse as Boomers retire, given their propensity for carbon-intensive travel. To keep Germany on track with its climate goals, proactive policies are needed to address these sociodemographic shifts and their implications for emissions. Findings extend beyond Germany, as affluent senior populations are growing in other high-income countries as well.

Climate change is no longer in the future, it is an evolving business and policy reality for tourism. Extreme weather events including heavy rainfall and flooding, drought, heat waves, storms, and wildfires have become more frequent and intense, affecting tourism destinations and demand everywhere in the world. Climate change also affects important tourism assets. Snowfall has become less reliable in many winter destinations, while sea level rise and ocean warming threaten resources such as beaches and coral reefs. There is also a rising cost of travel associated with climate change. All have in common that they will increasingly affect the global geography of travel and tourism. This paper provides an overview of the history of research into tourism and climate change, current research trends, as well as a discussion of key research gaps. It uses a geographical lens that centers on space, represented by destinations. Even though these interrelationships are now sufficiently well understood, there is limited evidence that industry or policy makers have internalized and act on this knowledge. Disruptions in tourism flows in time and space thus need to be anticipated. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

With mounting evidence of extreme weather events, it is increasingly important to understand the risks that thunderstorms, extreme precipitation, and wildfires pose to tourism. This study investigates the past occurrence of these phenomena in Europe, analyses recent trends, and evaluates them in relation to the dependency on tourism. The Tourism Exposure Index is developed to assess these risks, comprising two sub-indices: the Hazard Index and the Tourism Dependency Index. Results reveal a spatial concentration of regions with high/very-high tourism exposure, particularly in southern Europe and around the Mediterranean Sea. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the spatial distribution of weather extremes with highly disruptive potential. It is concluded that at-risk regions should develop weather hazard adaptation plans for tourism.

Governments and businesses have pledged to rapidly decarbonise tourism to achieve net-zero by 2050. While mitigation initiatives are implemented by individual businesses, destination managers need information to track sectoral mitigation progress and identify areas that require policy interventions. To support evidence-based tourism climate decision making, this study proposes a decomposition framework that assesses changes of tourism emissions based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) and International Energy Agency's (IEA) net-zero macro-scale mitigation strategies. This framework has the capacity to track and benchmark tourism mitigation progress against milestones. A case study of Australia is used to demonstrate the approach, showing that Australia's tourism system is not on track to net-zero, even though progress has been made on four out of six macro-scale indicators. Barriers to reaching net-zero are implied in continued growth of air transport and visitor spending, as well as the high carbon content of electricity used in the country. Results have global relevance, as they show that most countries will have to reduce emissions through a combination of government-led and destination-based strategies.

In this article, we summarise recent developments, identify gaps, and propose a research agenda for quantitative health impact assessment (HIA) of environmental exposures linked to urban transport and land use. This is based on a workshop of 30 experts, complemented by targeted literature identified by participants to illustrate the state of research and practice gaps. The practice of quantitative HIA in urban transport and land use interventions covers a diverse range of methods, models, and frameworks. The selection of an appropriate model depends upon the use case, i.e., the research question, resources and expertise, and application. The plurality of models can be a strength if differences are explicit and their implications are understood. A major gap in most assessments and frameworks is the lack of equity consideration. This should be integrated into all stages of the HIA, considering exposures, susceptibility, disease burden, capacity to benefit, household budgets, responsibility for harm, and participation in the process. Scenarios of environmental exposures in urban transport and land use interventions are often overly simple, while the scenario design process of spatial planning is often opaque. Researchers should specify the involvement of stakeholders and the data, evidence, or behavioural model used to construct the scenario. Recent developments in exposure assessment (remote sensing and modelling) have increased the capacity to conduct HIAs for small geographies at scale. At the same time, advances in simulation have enabled the representation of behaviours at high spatial and temporal resolution. The combination can enable person-centric measures accounting for location, activities, and behaviours, with HIA proceeding ahead of epidemiology. Most HIAs still use Comparative Risk Assessment. This is suitable for estimating the disease burdens of environmental exposures, but more advanced longitudinal methods are better suited for studying interventions. Beyond health outcomes, well-being must be incorporated. The monetisation of health outcomes through welfare economics remains contentious. Representation of uncertainty is increasingly acknowledged. Value of Information methods can inform where new data collection would most efficiently reduce final result uncertainty. In the context of the climate crisis and related environmental limits, methods are needed that consider adaptation alongside mitigation and prevention and test robustness to an increasingly unstable future.

Transport policy research has been developed systematically since the second half of the 20th century, when urban planning and transportation systems became critical components of economic development and urbanization. The field has evolved through a wealth of diverse publications and scholarly contributions. Our comprehensive guide synthesizes the state of the art in 20 major categories of transport policy research, identified based on a data-driven categorization. Each category is represented by a leading expert in the field, providing a rigorous assessment of the state of the art on an area together with an identification of challenges to inform future research and policymaking. Aggregated analysis reveals six major trends in policy Equity, and Resilience - combined to form the word ANSWER, with each component being crucial to understanding and addressing the field's multifaceted challenges. Our guide aims to provide answers to pressing challenges and serve as an essential, accessible reference regarding transport policy research for academics, policymakers, and industry stakeholders alike.