In April of this year, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) declared that the combined travel and tourism industries were now the fastest-growing industrial sector, contributing a record US$11.6 trillion to the global gross domestic product (GDP) as of end-2025.
Likewise, the twinned sectors contributed 9.8 percent of the global economy, reflecting growth at the rate of 4.1 percent per annum, significantly outpacing global economic growth.
But the growth of travel and tourism has been shadowed by a rather timely caveat: the gains we are seeing now could drop by around a third of the total contribution by 2050 as climate change adversely affects global tourism.
We’ve seen this regularly enough in the way storms and heatwaves impact the amount of inbound activity among destinations, but experts warn that we could be in for some serious trouble in the face of rising global temperatures, longer summers, shorter winters, and more intense weather phenomena worldwide.
How much do travel and tourism stand to lose with the effects of climate change?
Back in 2024, a study conducted by Cambridge University pointed out how rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and ocean acidification were having a negative impact on maritime tourism, particularly the way extreme heat and pollution were bleaching and killing coral reefs and affecting the quality of surrounding waters.
A year before that, the World Economic Forum (WEF) cited how rising temperatures and phenomena related to extreme heat deterred travellers from booking trips to certain destinations.
At the time of that particular study, the summer was punctuated by heatwaves in France and Italy, as well as wildfires in Greece and several North American states.
According to a study featured on global research database EBSCO, the global economy in general faces loss and damage projections between US$1.7 trillion and US$3.1 trillion per year by 2050.
As tourism is an industry reliant on infrastructural development and nature itself, experts say that it could bear the bulk of these potential losses.
A 2025 report from LGT Private Banking pretty much sums the situation up, saying:
“The tourism industry is extremely vulnerable to environmental challenges. For example, research [shows] that, because changing weather affects snowfall, the resulting shorter ski seasons in the USA could result in annual economic losses totalling more than US$1 billion. For the island nations of the Caribbean, where tourism can account for up to 90 percent of GDP according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the risk of national disasters like hurricanes is extremely high.”
It should also be noted that IMF researchers found that on average, a ten percent rise in climate change vulnerability is associated with a fall of ten percentage points in tourism revenues as a share of GDP.
A paradoxical situation
Ironically, while tourism stands to be one of the major losers in the face of climate change, it should be recalled that the industry is also one of the biggest contributors to climate-related issues.
Think about it, tourism via aviation, cruises, and other forms of transport generates around eight percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions.
As pointed out by UN Tourism at COP30, if global tourism fails to decouple its post-pandemic recovery from high-emissions travel, it will consume up to 40 percent of the world's remaining carbon budget required to keep warming under 1.5°C.
In doing so, the industry could drive the destruction of the very natural assets it relies on to generate revenue.
As a way of preventing this, global tourism’s overall operational mindset needs to shift from volume-driven growth to value-driven, circular management.
Tourism equinox
One particular solution referred to as a tourism equinox was offered in a joint study conducted by Irfan Arikan of the University of Applied Sciences in Austria and Ilker Ünserver of Turkiye’s Boğaziçi University.
According to the researchers, a tourism equinox is defined as a balance between the sustainability of cultural and natural heritage and marketing for tourism purposes forms an important aspect of planning and managing cultural and natural heritage sites.
Such a state may only be achieved through policy and legislation and this specific balance needs to be the primary objective in all decisions regarding tourism.
As such, governments and tourism stakeholders need to consider multiple areas of study to formulate viable long-term solutions.
Likewise, implementation must involve but not be limited to environmental, social, economic and urban development, and overall design.
Indeed, even as travel and tourism become an economic powerhouse on a global scale, their ultimate road to survival depends of finding the balance between industry and nature well before it’s too late.
