Reprint of: City tourism pre- and post-covid-19 pandemic - Messages to take home for climate change adaptation and mitigation?

The paper presents the status quo on climate change impacts on city tourism in Austria describing the impacts by air travel and a short stay on the greenhouse gas emissions and the changing conditions in the city. For Austrian cities, depending on location and topography, heavy rainfall events, storms and heat waves in particular could become increasingly relevant in the tourism context. For medium-sized and large cities, heat is the most frequently discussed topic in connection with possible adaptation potentials. The analysis of challenges shows a strong overlap of adaptation targets in city tourism with adaptation challenges for city planning including connection to the sub-urban surrounding areas to confront climate change impacts. Covid-19 pandemic, additionally, offered the opportunity to discuss a new re-start of the city-tourism against the experience during the shutdown period in spring 2020. The paper argues that we can learn from the current health crisis for coping with climate change related extreme events and to increase achievements in climate change mitigation. Firstly, the pandemic provides a strong ability to discuss the impact of city tourism due to short-term air travel and options to enhance more climate-friendly options on the other hand. Secondly, Covid-19 emphasized the need to reconsider the role of free spaces in metropolitan areas as well as their accessibility. Herewith synergies with climate change adaptation are likely when questioning the availability and accessibility of green and blue infrastructure as well as their capacities. Challenges including crowding and impacts by over tourism on public free spaces will require joint strategies involving all public and private institutions (including local communities and businesses) responsible for the maintenance of green and blue free spaces. Thirdly, the strong interactions between urban and suburban areas became evident once more, which will also be very relevant for city tourism in the future (e.g. in times of heat waves). Reflection on the transferability of coping with such crowding effects, related to the adaptive behaviour of residents and tourists in times of severe heat waves, might be relevant for both city tourism and summer tourism destinations near metropolitan areas. Finally, the Covid-19 crisis encourages discussions on over-tourism in metropolitan destinations in favour of a more balanced approach, in particular in inner city areas and around major sightseeing attractions.

City tourism pre- and post-covid-19 pandemic - Messages to take home for climate change adaptation and mitigation?

The paper presents the status quo on climate change impacts on city tourism in Austria describing the impacts by air travel and a short stay on the greenhouse gas emissions and the changing conditions in the city. For Austrian cities, depending on location and topography, heavy rainfall events, storms and heat waves in particular could become increasingly relevant in the tourism context. For medium-sized and large cities, heat is the most frequently discussed topic in connection with possible adaptation potentials. The analysis of challenges shows a strong overlap of adaptation targets in city tourism with adaptation challenges for city planning including connection to the sub-urban surrounding areas to confront climate change impacts. Covid-19 pandemic, additionally, offered the opportunity to discuss a new re-start of the city-tourism against the experience during the shutdown period in spring 2020. The paper argues that we can learn from the current health crisis for coping with climate change related extreme events and to increase achievements in climate change mitigation. Firstly, the pandemic provides a strong ability to discuss the impact of city tourism due to short-term air travel and options to enhance more climate-friendly options on the other hand. Secondly, Covid-19 emphasized the need to reconsider the role of free spaces in metropolitan areas as well as their accessibility. Herewith synergies with climate change adaptation are likely when questioning the availability and accessibility of green and blue infrastructure as well as their capacities. Challenges including crowding and impacts by over tourism on public free spaces will require joint strategies involving all public and private institutions (including local communities and businesses) responsible for the maintenance of green and blue free spaces. Thirdly, the strong interactions between urban and suburban areas became evident once more, which will also be very relevant for city tourism in the future (e.g. in times of heat waves). Reflection on the transferability of coping with such crowding effects, related to the adaptive behaviour of residents and tourists in times of severe heat waves, might be relevant for both city tourism and summer tourism destinations near metropolitan areas. Finally, the Covid-19 crisis encourages discussions on over-tourism in metropolitan destinations in favour of a more balanced approach, in particular in inner city areas and around major sightseeing attractions.

Past on-site experience, crowding perceptions, and use displacement of visitor groups to a peri-urban national park.

Past on-site experience was linked to the crowding perceptions and use displacement of 383 on-site visitors to the peri-urban Danube Floodplains National Park, Austria. Three visitor groups were determined according to their area experience: local residents from Vienna and rural communities, having the highest level of experience; regional visitors from the city and eastern Austria; and tourists from Austria and abroad with the lowest degree of experience. Crowding perceptions were significantly different across the user groups. More than 50% of local residents perceived the national park as crowded, whereas only 27% of regional visitors and 19% of tourists reported such an evaluation. Even among local residents and regional visitors, respondents with more on-site experience expressed a greater impression of a crowded park. Differences in crowding evaluations between local rural and urban residents and between regional rural and urban visitors were not found. For 27% of local residents and 15% of regional visitors, use levels were so unacceptable that they displaced temporally and spatially, whereas use displacement was relatively irrelevant for tourists. The use displacement strategies involved differ among the three user groups. Management implications were discussed, taking the specific situation of the small national park on the urban-rural fringe into consideration.

Evaluating visitor-monitoring techniques: a comparison of counting and video observation data.

Two visitor-monitoring methods, video monitoring and counts by human observers, were compared in order to identify and evaluate their respective advantages and disadvantages. The analysis considered user numbers, user type (walkers, dog walkers, bicyclists, and joggers) and group size of visitors. Remarkable differences were found between the two methods for user type and use levels. At low use levels, evaluations based on video monitoring resulted in fewer single bicyclists compared to counts by human observers, whereas at high use levels, human observers counted fewer walkers and bikers than video-interpreters. Based on this comparative analysis, we derive recommendations for more effective visitor-monitoring approaches. All data were collected during a visitor-monitoring project in the Danube Floodplains National Park in Austria between 1998 and 1999.