Climate-strategic tourism: from shared crisis to strategic advantage and global asymmetry – a conceptual exploration

Tourism is among the sectors most exposed to climate change, with extensive research depicting how environmental disturbance undermines its viability (Hall, 2019). Sea-level rise threatens low-lying destinations, extreme events disrupt transportability as well as safety, loss of biodiversity diminishes nature attractions, while changes in seasonality destabilise embedded tourism models (Becken, 2019; Scott et al., 2019). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2022) particularly points to tourism as among sectors most responsive to variation in climate, predicting wide socioeconomic repercussions for destinations whose economies are dependent on revenues from tourism.

This framing of climate change as a global risk has structured most scholarly discourse and policymaking. It has been instrumental in highlighting the vulnerability of tourism-driven economies and in provoking adaptation measures (Milbourn et al., 2025). Case studies indicate the scale of the challenge: small island developing states (SIDS) are vulnerable to survival-level impacts from sea-level rise and storm surge (Nurse et al., 2014); European Alps ski tourism is constrained by declining snow dependability (Steiger et al., 2017); coral reef tourism is threatened with destruction of their foundational systems (Spalding and Brown, 2015); and Mediterranean resorts can assume extreme losses in thermal comfort from intensifying heatwaves (Amelung and Moreno, 2012). This corpus of scholarship has, collectively, entrenched climate change as one of world tourism's defining issues, highlighting adaptation and resilience as the ascendant management imperatives.

While the literature has extensively documented the risks and adaptation imperatives facing tourism (e.g. Becken, 2019; Scott et al., 2019), no current framework systematically addresses how climate change can also produce strategic advantages for certain destinations. Existing approaches overwhelmingly focus on vulnerability, resilience and mitigation, often assuming that climate change represents a universal threat rather than a differentiated opportunity (Milbourn et al., 2025; UNEP, 2022; UNWTO, 2024). This constitutes a significant blind spot in tourism scholarship. By introducing the concept of climate-strategic tourism, this paper responds to an urgent need for a paradigm that not only accounts for vulnerability but also theorises competitive realignment under climate change. This approach diverges from the prevailing assumption of shared decline and instead asserts that climate change creates winners as well as losers in the global tourism economy – a dynamic that remains critically underexplored despite early signals in empirical work (Dogru et al., 2019; Rutty et al., 2022; Gössling and Scott, 2024).

To our knowledge, this is the first systematic attempt to theorise climate change as a driver of competitive realignment in tourism. Whereas many destinations are confronting disastrous contraction, others are experiencing increased climatic favourability, extended seasons for tourism or new opportunities to benefit from regions that can be involved in tourism. Northern and temperate destinations are becoming more competitive while heat stress cripples traditional summer capitals in southern European countries as well as Asian territories (Dogru et al., 2019). The Arctic regions, formerly constrained by sea ice, are available to cruise markets for tourism as well as adventure markets (Pashkevich et al., 2015). Higher-altitude destinations in Scandinavia as well as the Alps are diversifying into all-year products, retaining competitiveness in smaller snow seasons (Steiger et al., 2022). These patterns suggest that climate change is operating as much as a risk multiplier as it is as an opportunity redistributor in world markets for tourism.

This paper introduces the concept of climate-strategic tourism, defined as the deliberate exploitation of climate-created advantages by nations and destinations to boost competitiveness. This reconceptualisation resists the assumption that climate change can only represent an extinction threat to tourism. Instead, this is responsive to the asymmetrical nature of impacts, while losses are incurred by destinations, others are among relative gainers. Above all, this line of thought also recognises that advantage is not endogenous but is dependent on destinations' capacity to adapt strategically, by investment, policy experimentation and advanced destination management.

The study is guided by the following research questions:

1. How does climate change produce differentiated patterns of advantage and disadvantage across global tourism geographies?

2. What theoretical frameworks help explain the emergence, mobilisation and ethical implications of climate-induced advantage?

3. What governance principles and managerial strategies can support more equitable adaptation to climate-strategic tourism?

To address these questions, the paper synthesises three conceptual lenses:

1. Destination competitiveness, to explain how advantage is created and sustained;

2. Political economy, to analyse how that advantage is used strategically by states or institutions; and

3. Climate justice, to explore normative questions of fairness, redistribution and responsibility.

This triadic framework offers a novel lens through which to understand how climate change is not only a threat but also a differentiating force in global tourism.

Methodologically, the paper develops a conceptual framework supported by comparative illustrations from six global regions: the Arctic, Northern and Western Europe, North America, Asia–Pacific, the Mediterranean and SIDS/coral reef economies. These regions were selected for their diversity in climatic trajectories, governance responses and geopolitical positions. Drawing on secondary literature, the study analyses how advantage and vulnerability manifest across these contexts, and how they interact with broader governance and justice concerns.

While the study does not employ primary data collection, the methodological approach is based on conceptual synthesis and illustrative comparison. The framework emerges from integrating three theoretical strands and is supported by secondary academic and policy sources that reflect the current state of tourism-climate research. The six regional illustrations were selected not to provide empirical generalisability, but to demonstrate the differentiated expression of strategic advantage, governance capacity and justice implications across a range of climatic and institutional contexts. As such, the analysis is interpretive rather than empirical, aimed at conceptual clarity and theoretical development.

The value added is threefold. Firstly, theoretically, this approach extends conventional destination competitiveness models (Ritchie and Crouch, 2003) by thinking about climate change as a dynamic driver of comparative advantage. Secondly, this approach positions tourism in broader political economy discourses (Bianchi, 2018), recognising that climatic advantage can be understood as geopolitical leverage as well as soft power. Thirdly, this approach brings in the moral dimension by taking on climate justice (Robinson, 2020; Gössling et al., 2009; Gössling and Scott, 2024), enlarging loss and damage discourses to capture the under-theorised concept of benefit justice, the proposition that those who gain from climate-change driven change have responsibilities towards those who are disadvantaged.

Managerially, the redrafting has short-term destination organisational and policymaker imperatives. For climatically positive destinations, the challenge lies in recognising and taking advantage of new opportunity. This can involve reconfiguring branding strategy, investment in supporting emergent demand in infrastructure and taking reputational risk in taking commercial gain from a global emergency. For less positive destinations, the challenge lies in preparing for shrinkage, diversifying economies and lobbying for aid through the tools of international government. For global or international organisations like the UNWTO (UN Tourism) and the OECD, the rise of climate-strategic tourism presents the challenge in righting competitiveness asymmetries that existing resilience-focused approaches disregard. By offering a future-oriented and justice-informed model of tourism adaptation, this paper contributes to the theorisation of asymmetric climate impacts and supports the development of strategic and ethical responses to tourism's climate-unequal future.

Comprehending the asymmetries outlined above requires more than empirical illustration, as it calls for theoretical instruments capable of explaining how advantage emerges, how it is deployed and how it can be contested. Reconceptualising climate change as a potential strategic asset for tourism, in turn, necessitates the integration of theories that have rarely been brought into dialogue within tourism scholarship. Destination competitiveness provides the means to articulate how relative advantage arises, as political economy places advantage in the frameworks of power assemblages and systems of government and climate justice brings in the question of fairness in distributing losses as much as distributing gain (Ritchie and Crouch, 2003). Each one provides, when taken together, a conceptual frame to comprehend climate-strategic tourism. This integration represents a departure from traditional tourism frameworks that treat climate change as a shared threat. Instead, this paper presents a paradigm in which climate change functions as a differentiator of opportunity and risk, generating new winners and losers in the global tourism economy. This perspective remains largely overlooked in existing literature, yet it is crucial for designing policy, governance and management responses that are both competitive and equitable.

Destination competitiveness model (Ritchie and Crouch, 2003) remains the most widely used approach to understanding why destinations are more successful than others. Its main point is the interaction between four pillars: core resources and attractors (natural, cultural and created attributes), supporting factors (infrastructure, accessibility, hospitality services), destination management and situational conditions. Therefore, competitiveness is not inherent but arises from the dynamic interaction between resource endowments and managerial competencies. Climate change disrupts this balance through direct alteration to environment resources and conditions of situations. Measures of thermal comfort, biodiversity and landscape integrity are in quick transition, while accessibility is disrupted through melting sea lanes, broken systems, or fluctuating flight market trends (Milbourn et al., 2025; Becken, 2019). Higher latitude destinations, for instance, can benefit through lower summer heat, while low-lying coastal resorts are confronted with extinction (Scott et al., 2019).

From the managerial perspective, competitiveness theory throws into sharp relief the value of adaptability on strategy: benefit from climate is not innate but is dependent on the destinations' adaptability. A cool summer climate may attract diverted tourists, but only destinations that have acceptable infrastructure, successful branding, as well as flexible governing models will benefit from that market. Here, competitiveness provides the mechanics of benefit in the warmer world. Dwyer and Kim (2003) expand the model by incorporating demand conditions, situational influences and government policy into competitiveness outcomes, while Pike and Page (2014) emphasise the role of destination marketing organisations (DMOs) in shifting destination appeal under environmental stress. These perspectives underscore that competitive advantage is dynamic, context-sensitive and increasingly climate-dependent.

While the Dwyer and Kim (2003) model provides a valuable basis for understanding destination competitiveness, it primarily focuses on endogenous factors – such as resources, policy and infrastructure – within relatively stable market conditions. This study extends that framework by introducing climate change as an exogenous, disruptive force that actively reshapes global tourism competitiveness.

Rather than treating climate as a background variable, our concept of climate-strategic tourism reframes it as a driver of strategic advantage and realignment, producing new winners and losers. In doing so, we also integrate dimensions often absent from traditional competitiveness models: the political economy of climate-induced advantage and a novel ethical lens through the concept of benefit justice – which addresses the moral responsibilities of climatically advantaged destinations towards those disadvantaged by the same phenomenon. Thus, this framework does not relabel existing models, but rather repositions competitiveness theory within a dynamic, unequal climate context, offering new insights for governance, strategy and justice.

While destination competitiveness research has provided a robust framework for understanding how destinations perform under stable conditions, it has not adequately theorised external structural forces such as climate change. Models like Dwyer and Kim (2003) focus heavily on internal determinants (resources, policy, infrastructure), assuming that competitive position is shaped primarily through endogenous strategy. This perspective obscures how exogenous climatic shifts can produce uneven, unearned and involuntary advantages, particularly across latitudes and biogeographic zones. Moreover, competitiveness literature tends to prioritise economic performance while neglecting ethical and ecological dimensions. As a result, it lacks tools to interrogate the justice implications of unequal climate advantage. A critical reframing is therefore needed to understand competitiveness not only as a function of strategic choice but also as an outcome of global climate asymmetries.

Climate change intersects these dynamics by reconfiguring advantage. For example, cruise vacations to the north are not only a market trend but are also subject to geopolitical competition in the race for maritime routes as much as in access to resources (Ren et al., 2021). Northern states that grow more tourism-competitive can consolidate power regionally as well as internationally through their climatic advantage in trade, investment or environment governing negotiations. This also aligns with Mosedale's (2016) critique of neoliberal tourism governance, where market-led responses to global change often amplify structural inequalities. Higgins-Desbiolles (2018) similarly argues that tourism development is shaped by embedded power hierarchies, which are rarely challenged by mainstream adaptation policies. Yet the political economy of climate-strategic tourism remains under-theorised. While these scholars interrogate the system-level dynamics of inequality, few have examined how climatic shifts themselves confer new strategic advantages, enabling some states to capture climate-induced demand while others are exposed to catastrophic loss.

Despite its strengths in exposing global power asymmetries, political economy approaches in tourism often prioritise capital flows, market dynamics and neoliberal restructuring, with limited focus on emerging ecological asymmetries. While valuable work has examined tourism's role in dependency, neocolonial governance and spatial inequality, much of this research remains grounded in human agency and overlooks non-anthropogenic drivers like climate-induced redistribution of desirability. Furthermore, political economy analyses tend to treat climate risk and adaptation as exogenous to accumulation regimes, rarely addressing how strategic advantage may itself become politicised, securitised or hoarded. There is limited theorisation of how power is exercised not only over resources and people, but over the very conditions of climatic favourability. This gap prevents a full understanding of how climate winners may shape global tourism trajectories. Bridging this blind spot requires a more-than-human political economy sensitive to planetary-scale differentiation.

The third pillar, climate justice, puts ethics first. It stresses unequal sharing of climate harm and adaptive capacity, bringing responsibility for emissions together with vulnerability to impacts (Robinson, 2020; Gössling and Scott, 2025). For tourism, carbon emissions responsibility has tended to dominate climate justice arguments, ethics including “last chance tourism” (Lemelin et al., 2010), as well as the structural disadvantage faced by highly vulnerable destinations such as the SIDS.

However, climate justice has rarely been used to address the question of benefit. Here emerges the new concept of benefit justice. If the climate change creates losers as well as winners, should those who benefit have obligations to those who are losing? Analogies can be drawn from climate finance in the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whereby wealthy countries are to contribute funds to adaptation funds. Benefit justice in tourism, a concept not yet developed in scholarly literature, could include redistributing economic gains from climate-favoured destinations, supporting international solidarity funds and establishing mechanisms for knowledge and technology transfer. The concept can take the form of redistribution tools such as redistributing revenues from favoured destinations in order to finance adaptations in less favoured regions, establishing preferential marketing agreements funded by climate benefactors, or technology transfer and knowledge sharing for adaptation infrastructure.

Climate justice scholarship has been instrumental in foregrounding issues of vulnerability, loss and displacement in tourism, particularly for destinations already marginalised within global systems. However, the normative framing tends to focus on harm and compensation, offering limited engagement with the politics of benefit. The assumption that climate change generates only negative impacts limits the scope of justice debates, failing to account for the ethical responsibilities of those who gain from climatic shifts. Existing frameworks lack guidance on how to govern unearned advantage or operationalise redistribution when there are no clear perpetrators, only beneficiaries. Moreover, calls for equitable adaptation often centre on at-risk populations, without interrogating the governance of emergent privilege. A more comprehensive justice framework must address not only how to compensate for loss but also how to share emergent gains in ethically legitimate ways.

Benefit justice poses reputational and moral challenges to managers. Companies that openly frame themselves as climate refuges may attract criticism for profiteering from a global tragedy. Anticipatory actions towards solidarity can strengthen their legitimacy, brand name and long-term resilience instead. These managerial dilemmas resonate with broader scholarly debates. Scheyvens and Biddulph (2017) call for more inclusive tourism development models that consider structural disadvantage in tourism governance, while Lenzen et al. (2018) show that emissions from tourism are disproportionately concentrated in wealthy regions, thus reinforcing the ethical need for redistribution. These insights offer a foundation for legitimising benefit justice within the tourism-climate policy debate.

The integration of competitiveness, political economy and climate justice provides a comprehensive framework to understand climate-strategic tourism in its full complexity. These perspectives do not operate in isolation but rather interact dynamically across three levels of analysis. First, destination competitiveness explains how climate change alters the environmental and infrastructural foundations of tourism, creating uneven patterns of emerging advantage. However, competitive potential alone does not determine outcomes. Second, political economy situates this advantage within broader systems of power – showing how states, regions or corporations leverage climatic shifts to enhance their geopolitical standing, market share or soft power. Climate advantage becomes a strategic asset. Third, climate justice interrogates the ethical consequences of these realignments, questioning the fairness of outcomes and calling for mechanisms of redistribution and responsibility. This includes the novel concept of benefit justice, introduced in this study.

Taken together, these lenses reveal that climate advantage is not neutral or automatic. It is shaped by strategic action, embedded in unequal global systems and fraught with ethical dilemmas. The climate-strategic tourism framework thus theorises how advantage emerges (competitiveness), is leveraged (political economy) and should be governed (climate justice). This relational approach provides a new lens for both analysis and action in the governance of tourism futures.

The power of bringing these perspectives together lies in their complementarity. Competitive explanation is the politics of advantage, meaning how changes in resources, infrastructure and management yield winners and losers (Ritchie and Crouch, 2003; Dwyer and Kim, 2003). Political economy is the politics of rendering advantage into power, how states convert climatic change in tourism to exercise power, gain trade, or obtain spatial rights (Bianchi, 2018). Climate justice is how advantage needs to be redistributed, how asymmetries are framed as obstacles to morality and good government (Gössling and Scott, 2024; Robinson, 2020).

Taken together, these perspectives offer a framework for examining climate-strategic tourism as both challenge and opportunity (Figure 1). In contrast to conventional approaches that focus primarily on shielding destinations from climate risk, this integrative perspective recognises that environmental change can also be engaged strategically, generating consequences that are not only economic, but also geopolitical and ethical. Building on this conceptual reframing, the integration of these perspectives provides distinct contributions for scholarship, management and governance. For researchers, it advances theory beyond vulnerability by developing the notion of climate advantage. For managers, it points to the dual imperative of leveraging opportunities while mitigating ethical and reputational risks. For policymakers and global institutions, it identifies the governing frameworks required to address the inequalities generated by climate-strategic tourism. In combination, competitiveness theory explains how advantage emerges and is managed, political economy examines how advantage is converted into power within global systems, and climate justice interrogates who benefits, who loses, and how governance should respond ethically. Together, these insights shift the climate–tourism conversation from one of shared vulnerability to one of asymmetrical adaptation, a reframing that this paper seeks to both theorise and apply.

Asymmetric effects from climate change are already reshaping global tourism geographies. This chapter applies the lens of climate-strategic tourism to six regional cases, evaluating patterns of competitive repositioning, governance response and ethical challenges. Each case illustrates how climatic transformation creates not only risk, but also a redistribution of opportunity, influenced by destination management, global politics and justice considerations.

The six regions were selected as illustrative contrasts to capture the broad spectrum of climate-induced asymmetries in global tourism. Specifically, they reflect variation across three key dimensions: (1) Geographical positioning (e.g. polar, temperate, tropical); (2) Climatic trajectories (e.g. climatically advantaged, disadvantaged or transitional) and (3) Governance capacity and strategic response.

The Arctic and Northern/Western Europe exemplify emerging advantage; Asia–Pacific and North America represent regions with mixed impacts and adaptive responses; while the Mediterranean and SIDS/coral reef economies illustrate extreme vulnerability and limited strategic options. Rather than aiming for empirical completeness, the cases serve as analytical anchors to demonstrate how the proposed framework applies across diverse spatial, political and developmental contexts. This selection logic enhances comparative validity while enabling theory-building for climate-strategic tourism.

While this section does not present empirical findings in the traditional sense, it provides a conceptually informed analysis of six global tourism regions. The aim is not generalisation but illustration: to demonstrate how patterns of climatic advantage, governance response and justice tensions manifest differently across global contexts. The discussion draws on secondary literature to identify emergent asymmetries and interpretive tensions relevant to the conceptual framework.

The Arctic is a quintessential example of climate-strategic tourism. The rising temperatures have seen rapid melting of the sea ice to open up new shipping lanes while revealing landscapes previously inaccessible to tourists. Cruise tourism has gained greatly, with tour agencies marketing cruises to Greenland, Svalbard and the Canadian Arctic as privileged encounters with ephemeral, transitioning landscapes (Lück et al., 2010; Pashkevich et al., 2015). Adventure tourism as much as scientific tourism are gaining traction through the will to observe landscapes “before they disappear” (Varnajot and Lépy, 2024).

From a strategic perspective, the states in the Arctic region are busy positioning themselves to accommodate this demand. Norway has invested in cruise facilities in Longyearbyen and Tromsø and has become the gateway to the Arctic (Hall, 2015). Canada is enhancing visitor facilities in Nunavut, whereas Russia promotes the Northern Sea Route as shipping as well as tourism corridor (Ren et al., 2021). These are few instances showcasing how the states are taking climate change as their asset from the strategic perspective and are utilising tourism not only for their economy but their geopolitics as well. This also aligns with the political economy framework introduced earlier and so climatic change is being actively converted into geopolitical leverage and soft power. Nevertheless, tourism in the Arctic also represents risk. Fragile environments are put in extreme strain from flows of visitation, and safety challenges are intensified by volatile weather (Varnajot and Lépy, 2024; Hall, 2015).

In contrast to the Arctic's geopolitical dynamics, Northern and Western Europe are experiencing a shift in climatic competitiveness. While heatwaves intensify in the Mediterranean, summer destinations in colder places are picking up customers looking for thermal relaxation. Scotland, Iceland, Norway, as well as the Baltic republics, are reporting peak-season arrivals increases, normally from markets that are traditionally interested in southern Europe (Dogru et al., 2019; Gössling et al., 2013). Tourism boards are already revising their positioning in light of this advantage. Iceland brands as a “cool summer” to position itself as refuge from heat-stressed climates (Ingólfsdóttir and Gunnarsdóttir, 2020). Scotland sells longer outdoor seasons, linking climate appropriateness to festivals and cultural sites. Nordic countries brand “cool tourism” as a lifestyle to Asian and Southern European markets (OECD, 2021; Gössling et al., 2013).

These strengths are also challenges. Infrastructures are hard pressed to respond to peak seasons, especially in small towns. Increased visit volumes pose the risk of overtourism, environmental degradation, as well as resident dissatisfaction which is already significant in Iceland (Gil-Alana and Huijbens, 2018). Strategically, managers' task is to create capacity and dispersal policy that is still competitive yet fails to undermine the standard of living. Policymakers' task is how to manage advantage responsibly, to guarantee that rewards are invested back in sustainable infrastructure rather than intensifying inequities. This reflects the competitiveness theory framework: advantage is not automatic but depends on institutional readiness, branding adaptability and investment in infrastructure.

Shifting focus to Asia–Pacific, the region reveals sharp contrasts between vulnerability and emerging advantage. Rising heat stress in Asia–Pacific puts existing tourism markets in Southeast Asia at risk, while temperate markets in Japan, South Korea and New Zealand become more promising. Japan's northernmost region, Hokkaido and South Korea's mountainous regions offer cooler summer climates and attract tourists from warmer regions in Asia (Becken, 2019; UNWTO and Griffith University, 2017). New Zealand markets their temperate climate and natural beauty to brand the region as climatically as well as governmentally resilient for tourism (Kaján and Saarinen, 2013).

Countries in the region are beginning to integrate climate advantage into policy. Japan is branding Hokkaido as a summer refuge, whereas South Korea is developing highland infrastructures as well as ecotourism (OECD, 2021). New Zealand freely promotes their climatic stability in branding campaigns that are specifically targeted towards long-haul travellers (Becken, 2019; Tourism New Zealand, 2021). These are just examples in reference to how climate-strategic tourism is integrated into national policy as well as marketing. These cases show early attempts to institutionalise climate-driven advantage through national tourism strategies, thus linking both competitiveness and proactive governance.

North America also illustrates climate asymmetry well within a single continent representing the split between climatically favoured and less privileged destinations. The American South is experiencing increased heat stress, Hurricane exposure, as well as coastal erosion, imperilling destinations like the Gulf Coast and Florida. However, northern destinations like the Canadian Rockies and some states in New England are becoming climate refuges, providing cooler summers as well as longer seasons in which to enjoy outdoor pursuits (Scott, 2021).

Canada is particularly rebranding as a climate-change-proof tourism destination, national parks, mountainous areas and temperate coastlines benefitting from shifting demand. Expenditure on infrastructure, advertising and safeguarded areas is significant recognition of this advantage. American ski resorts in high-altitude climates (e.g. Utah, the Rockies in Colorado) are diversifying their products, while lower-altitude resorts are losing competitiveness (Knowles and Scott, 2024; Rutty et al., 2022). This case strongly reflects destination competitiveness theory where altitude and latitude are being converted into new market positions through branding and investment.

In stark contrast, the Mediterranean reveals the reversal of competitive advantage. This region has historically been the globe's number one region for tourism, accounting for over 30% of world arrivals (UNWTO, 2021). But at the same time, it is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change. Higher temperatures, lower thermal comfort, lower water availability, as well as biodiversity loss, put pressure on peak-season sustainability through tourism (Amelung and Moreno, 2012; Urso et al., 2025). Heatwaves are more discouraging to tourists, while capital costs for cooling as well as water distribution increase (Moreno, 2010). Nations such as Italy, Greece and Spain are particularly exposed as summer beach tourism underpins their economies. Projections suggest significant decreases in climatic suitability in the mid-century, with peak-season demand shifting to the north (Scott et al., 2012). Adaptation responses such as diversifying the season and pursuing product innovation are among the solutions being implemented, although the entrenched structure of summer tourism remains a constraint.

Unlike Arctic or temperate regions, SIDS and coral reef economies face existential threats with minimal strategic options. Low elevation, high tourism reliance and low adaptive capacity leave them especially vulnerable to sea-level rise, storm surge and coastal erosion (Nurse et al., 2014). For resorts like Pacific island nations, Seychelles and the Maldives, tourism provides over 50% of GDP, so climate change impacts are both existential as well as systemic (Shakeela and Becken, 2014). Unlike cold arctic or temperate resorts, SIDS cannot opt for climate advantage. Adaptation responses such as sea walls, coastal strengthening or diversification are costly as well as in most instances ineffective. Tourist facilities such as resorts, airports and port facilities are unduly exposed, while coral reef damage removes their best asset (Howlett et al., 2023). Coral reefs are home to about 25% of all the world's marine biodiversity and provide billions in tourism benefit annually (Spalding and Brown, 2015). Despite large-scale bleaching due to rise in sea temperatures as well as acidification in seas, their destruction is imminent. The Great Barrier Reef, the Caribbean, as well as the Red Sea, are severely degraded, imperilling reef-based industries that rely on tourism. This is where benefit justice becomes essential: strategic gain by others must be balanced by support for those with severely limited adaptive capacity.

In reef-based economies, responses such as shifting towards cultural or inland tourism, investing in ecosystem restoration, or diversifying products offer partial options, yet none adequately substitute for the value of lost reefs. Policymakers face the difficult dilemma of balancing reef protection with tourism development, raising funds for restoration while at the same time managing visitor expectations. The degradation of coral reef systems highlights a critical threshold, beyond which climate change eliminates even the possibility of strategic adaptation. Reef destinations therefore mark the boundaries of climate-strategic tourism. Certain assets, once lost, cannot be recovered, and unlike Arctic or temperate regions, reef-based economies cannot restructure around climatic advantage. Their situation underscores the imperative for climate-strategic thinking to recognise that climate-driven losses and opportunities are asymmetrical in nature and profoundly unequal in their distribution.

Across the highlighted regions, three recurring patterns can be identified. First, climate “winners” are concentrated in higher latitudes, higher altitudes and temperate regions, where climatic suitability improves and tourist seasons are extended. Second, climate “losers” are predominantly located in low-lying, tropical and heat-stressed areas, where tourism models depend on fragile natural resources. Third, competitive advantage is not automatic; destinations must act strategically to realise potential gains by investing in infrastructure, branding and governance. Collectively, these patterns expose the structural asymmetry of climate-strategic tourism and challenge conventional understandings of global competitiveness (Table 1).

For destination managers, this implies that climate change should be understood not only as a risk but also as a driver of competitive realignment. For policymakers, it signals the necessity of recognising both opportunities and vulnerabilities in formulating strategies that explicitly incorporate climatic change. The analysis further points to the importance of redistributive approaches and climate-aware development models that move beyond the reactive logic of resilience alone. For global governance, it highlights the imperative of addressing asymmetries to prevent the reproduction of new inequalities in world tourism.

The emergence of climate-strategic tourism confronts the foundational assumptions of global tourism governance. Such unequally balanced geographies of advantage and loss do not occur in a vacuum. They are tested in their robustness by the tourism systems of government, which remain largely premised on homogenous vulnerability, rather than diversified competitiveness. Yet uneven adjustment is already visible, governance systems have failed to evolve with the shifting geography of tourism opportunity, raising profound strategic, ethical and institutional questions.

Current frameworks, promoted through institutions such as the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), primarily conceptualise tourism as universally exposed to climate risk. Their dominant focus is resilience building, adaptability and risk management for vulnerable destinations (UNWTO, 2024; OECD, 2021). While important, this framing fails to account for emerging asymmetries of climatic advantage, and in doing so, leaves a conceptual and policy void. Thus, global tourism governance has largely focused on mitigation and adaptation to protect threatened destinations. UNWTO practices include monitoring risk, capacity building and embedding climate adaptation into national tourism strategies. OECD reports emphasise resilience as a defensive strategy, and IPCC analyses catalogue exposure to environmental and socio-economic pressures.

National and destination-level policies are similarly defensive in orientation. UNWTO (2024) and OECD (2025) continue to centre resilience and sustainability, UNEP (2022) models warming scenarios and the WTTC (2022) roadmap addresses competitiveness through environmental indicators, not redistribution. On the ground, interventions range from snowmaking in the Alps (Steiger et al., 2022), to sea walls in SIDS, to cyclone-resilient infrastructure in storm-prone regions.

These policy models are implicitly grounded in a one-size-fits-all narrative of shared vulnerability (Figure 2). Climate-strategic tourism reveals, however, that the crisis is not shared equally, nor are the opportunities. Destinations gaining climatic advantage are absent from strategic guidance, while those losing it face structural decline with little access to redistribution.

The neglect of asymmetries has serious consequences. Climate change is not delivering a standardised crisis, but rather a reconfiguration of tourism competitiveness, creating new winners and deepening losses for existing leaders. As mentioned, high-latitude, high-altitude and temperate destinations are positioned to benefit, while SIDS, Mediterranean resorts and reef-based economies face potential collapse. This theoretical blind spot is operationally dangerous. Destination management organisations in advantaged regions receive no policy guidance on how to responsibly harness climatic benefit. Disadvantaged destinations are left without pathways to climate solidarity. Governance institutions risk deepening global tourism inequality by failing to anticipate and manage the redistribution of advantage. From a climate justice perspective, this is a governance failure, one that undermines both legitimacy and equity.

Broader climate governance reflects a similar pattern: international negotiations have institutionalised debates on “loss and damage,” but not on benefit redistribution. Mechanisms for climate finance exist to assist vulnerable states, yet no instruments exist to manage emerging advantage in sectors like tourism. This omission is not only technically incomplete but ethically problematic. To meet the imperatives of climate-strategic tourism, governance frameworks must evolve. This paper also advances the imperative of establishing a new policy agenda that recognises competitive asymmetries, redistributes benefits and prevents strategic advantage from entrenching global inequality. Three points of innovation are especially relevant:

1. Benefit-sharing mechanisms: Like climate finance, benefit-sharing in tourism would involve redistributing a portion of gains from climatically privileged destinations. This may include financial transfers, marketing partnerships or capacity-building programmes. For example, increased revenues in northern European destinations that capture Mediterranean demand could fund adaptation infrastructure in heat-stressed regions. This gives operational expression to the concept of benefit justice introduced earlier, moving from theory to practical redistribution frameworks.

2. Preferential marketing and branding alliances: Global bodies like UN Tourism could coordinate joint marketing programmes pairing “climate winners” with “climate losers.” These would offer visibility and funding for vulnerable destinations, framed as climate solidarity branding. This would accept the reality of asymmetry while affirming shared ethical responsibility.

3. Climate-responsive trade and adaptation frameworks: Tourism should be recognised in climate agreements and trade policy as a sector directly impacted by environmental change and in need of climate-sensitive provisions. Trade agreements could include preferential access, funding or knowledge transfer. Adaptation funds under the UNFCCC could explicitly allocate resources for tourism-sector diversification.

Despite its ethical appeal, the implementation of benefit justice in tourism governance faces significant political and institutional barriers. First, the principle of redistribution challenges entrenched notions of national sovereignty and destination self-interest, also advantaged regions may lack political incentives to share gains, particularly if no binding international mechanisms exist. Second, global tourism governance is fragmented, with no centralised authority capable of enforcing benefit-sharing schemes, thus leaving implementation to voluntary action or bilateral agreements. Third, existing development finance tools are often ill-suited to address the subtle and indirect nature of climatic advantage in tourism, which complicates eligibility, measurement and allocation.

These challenges underscore the need to not only conceptualise benefit justice but also situate it within real-world power structures. Political feasibility depends on reframing climate advantage not just as a right to be defended, but as a shared responsibility to be governed. This may require multi-scalar coordination, including regional compacts, cross-border marketing agreements and stronger roles for international institutions like UN Tourism and the OECD in mediating competitive asymmetries.

From a destination perspective, the governance gap creates both strategic ambiguity and ethical risk. In climatically advantaged regions, the instinct may be to maximise gains through investment, branding and market capture. But pursuing competitive advantage without regard for global equity invites reputational backlash, accusations of exploitation and possible regulatory responses. Managers must balance strategic responsiveness with ethical foresight, integrating solidarity into destination strategy.

In disadvantaged destinations, the challenge is dual. First, managers must campaign for recognition of asymmetries and access to benefit-sharing arrangements. Second, they must initiate diversification, away from fragile assets, towards more climate-resilient sectors. These efforts may not offset existential threats, but they can extend viability in the near to medium term.

For policymakers and institutions, the challenge is structural. A governance model focused only on resilience cannot manage the reality of climate-strategic tourism. If unaddressed, advantage may become a vector of global inequality, contrary to the Sustainable Development Goals' principle to “leave no one behind.” Current governance focuses primarily on shielding vulnerable destinations, a task that is vital but ultimately incomplete. The asymmetrical reordering induced by climate change requires governance systems to manage both vulnerability and advantage. Defining climate-strategic tourism as a governance category entails rethinking priorities, moving from approaches centred solely on resilience to frameworks that also regulate asymmetries, incentivise redistribution and embed equity in strategic opportunity.

Benefit sharing, preferential marketing and climate-informed trade agreements are critical starting points. For managers, this reorientation means adapting strategy not just for competition but also for accountability. For policymakers, it means aligning national interest with global fairness. And for international institutions, the question is whether tourism governance can rise to meet the challenge of advantage as well as protect against loss.

Climate change has traditionally been conceptualised within tourism research and governance as a global threat, a catalyst of vulnerability, loss and defensive adaptation. This paper has proposed an alternative and urgent perspective: that climate change is also a driver of opportunity, capable of reshaping the global tourism landscape not only through harm but through the production of new strategic advantages. By introducing the concept of climate-strategic tourism, this study argues that changing climatic conditions are not simply disrupting tourism systems but actively reordering them in ways that generate asymmetrical benefits and risks. While low-lying, heat-stressed and ecologically fragile destinations such as SIDS, coral reef economies and Mediterranean coastal regions face intensifying existential challenges, higher-latitude, higher-altitude and temperate destinations are increasingly emerging as the inadvertent beneficiaries of a warming world.

This paper set out to examine how climate change can function not only as a threat but also as a strategic differentiator in global tourism. Drawing on three intersecting perspectives – destination competitiveness, political economy and climate justice – it asked:

1. How does climate change restructure competitive advantage across tourism destinations?

2. What governance responses emerge in the face of climate-induced asymmetries?

3. How can the concept of benefit justice help address the ethical tensions of unearned advantage?

Through a conceptual framework and comparative regional illustrations, the study shows that climate change produces structural asymmetries in opportunity and exposure, yet these are insufficiently theorised or governed in existing tourism discourse. The proposed notion of climate-strategic tourism repositions climate change as a catalyst for competitive realignment, while the idea of benefit justice offers a normative lens to guide its equitable governance.

The paper makes three key theoretical contributions. First, it expands the theory of destination competitiveness by incorporating climate as an evolving determinant of comparative and strategic advantage. Second, it positions tourism within the wider political economy of climate change, illustrating how tourism performance is not only shaped by environmental conditions but by global trade flows, geopolitical ambitions and governance capacity. Third, it introduces the notion of benefit justice, extending the scope of climate ethics beyond the responsibilities of emitters and victims to include those who profit, often inadvertently, from climate-induced market realignments.

The study contributes to tourism theory in three key ways. First, it challenges the prevailing paradigm of climate change as a universal risk, proposing instead that it induces differentiated advantage. Second, it advances a triangulated theoretical model, integrating competitiveness, political economy and justice – domains often treated separately. Third, it introduces benefit justice as a novel conceptual tool to govern emergent asymmetries, expanding the normative terrain of climate justice beyond loss and damage.

Empirically, the paper has drawn on comparative case illustrations to demonstrate how these dynamics are already unfolding across regions. Examples from the Arctic, Northern and Western Europe, North America, Asia–Pacific, the Mediterranean and SIDS reveal a world where tourism is no longer uniformly vulnerable but differentially repositioned. Climatic conditions, government capacity, adaptive infrastructure and branding strategy together determine who gains and who loses. These are not abstract risks and benefits, they are materialising in demand flows, investment patterns and shifting competitive hierarchies.

Practically, the framework equips destination managers and policymakers with a lens to interpret emerging climatic advantages – not only to harness them competitively, but to do so ethically and inclusively. Strategic branding, adaptive investment and interregional coordination become critical. At a global level, international institutions must move beyond resilience paradigms to recognise and regulate asymmetrical gains, ensuring alignment with SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities).

For tourism managers, the paper emphasises the growing need to respond strategically. Destinations with climatic advantage must recognise that competitiveness brings reputational and ethical obligations. To benefit from changing conditions while sustaining legitimacy, destination organisations must align their adaptation strategies with principles of sustainability, inclusiveness and solidarity. For disadvantaged destinations, survival requires a dual approach: diversifying away from climate-exposed assets while mobilising for greater international recognition and access to redistributive mechanisms. For policymakers, the challenge extends further, requiring reform of tourism governance frameworks that continue to emphasise homogenous vulnerability rather than addressing the emerging asymmetries highlighted by climate-strategic tourism.

In support of this conceptual reframing, the paper has outlined a future research agenda that addresses the theoretical and practical dimensions of climate-strategic tourism. Priorities include the development of competitiveness-focused climate modelling, cross-national studies of adaptive governance, analysis of climate-related branding narratives, normative exploration of benefit justice, geopolitical mapping of tourism advantage, and the emerging tension between climate leadership and tourism carbon diplomacy. These research directions not only enrich academic theory but also provide concrete guidance for decision-makers seeking to navigate the new realities of global tourism in a warming world.

Underlying all of this is a normative argument. Recognising that climate change creates winners as well as losers in tourism does not justify complacency or opportunism. Rather, it demands a heightened sense of ethical responsibility and global solidarity. The future of tourism should not be one of unbalanced gain but one of strategic and equitable adaptation. Climate-strategic tourism is thus more than a conceptual lens. It is a call to reimagine competitiveness in ways that are both informed and fair, guiding tourism not only towards resilience but also towards justice.

More broadly, the concept of climate-strategic tourism challenges linear or static views of tourism futures. It calls for anticipatory governance, adaptive destination strategy and a rethinking of competitiveness in light of uneven climate trajectories. If unaddressed, these asymmetries could entrench new global inequalities in tourism; if governed strategically, they may catalyse a more equitable and climate-aligned evolution of the sector. In this way, climate-strategic tourism not only reframes the present but actively informs the design of more just and resilient tourism futures.

In light of the structural asymmetries identified in climate-strategic tourism, it becomes imperative to translate conceptual insights into actionable guidance. The following strategic recommendations aim to support destination managers and policymakers in responding ethically and effectively to emerging climatic advantages, while aligning with global sustainability objectives.

1. Ethical branding strategies: Destinations gaining from climate advantage should adopt transparent branding that acknowledges their position without exploiting global crisis narratives. Ethical framing can strengthen legitimacy and avoid reputational risk.

2. Climate-sensitive communication: Destination managers should craft messaging that reflects climate awareness and solidarity, positioning themselves as responsible actors within a global tourism ecosystem facing unequal impacts.

3. Adaptive infrastructure investment: Climatically advantaged destinations must anticipate demand shifts by investing in sustainable transport, water and energy systems that can support increased visitation without exacerbating local inequalities.

4. Inclusive benefit-sharing models: Managers in gaining regions can initiate voluntary redistribution schemes – such as allocating a portion of tourism revenues to support adaptation in more vulnerable destinations – thus operationalising the principle of benefit justice at the organisational level.

These recommendations align directly with the Sustainable Development Goals – SDG 13 (Climate Action) by promoting proactive adaptation and climate-informed governance, and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) through the redistribution of advantage and strengthening of global solidarity. Positioning climate-strategic tourism within the SDG framework can enhance both policy relevance and moral legitimacy, offering a path towards equitable transformation of the tourism sector in a warming world.

As a conceptual study, the framework has not been tested empirically. Future research should aim to model climate-induced competitive shifts quantitatively, compare governance responses across scales and explore mechanisms for redistributive governance. Longitudinal data on visitor flows, destination repositioning and institutional adaptation could ground the framework in dynamic empirical reality. Further work is also needed to examine tourist perceptions of climate-advantaged destinations and the politics of advantage accumulation.

During the preparation of this work the author(s) used ChatGPT to assist with language polishing. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the published article.

This publication is connected to Project no. ADVANCE 153346, which has been implemented with the support provided by the Ministry of Culture and Innovation of Hungary from the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund, financed under the Advance_25 funding scheme.