Understanding the impact of climate change on Scottish tourism.

Scottish tourism is forecasted to grow by 50 per cent over the next 10 years but one of the factors that may hinder or facilitate that growth is climatic change. Indeed, many people are now starting to question the impact of such significant growth on the planet. Therefore, this paper assesses the impact of climate change on Scottish tourism in order that policy makers can separate the facts from the myths. The dimensions of climate change such as CO₂ emissions, temperature, rainfall, storms, and wind speed are discussed and the implications for Scottish tourism are mapped. Those implications may include the introduction of CO₂ allowances for all travellers, more wind farms in rural locations impacting on film tourism or the grouse species disappearing from Scotland. The paper concludes with a number of adaptation strategies that Scottish tourism agencies and business could adopt to mitigate climate change. The importance of this paper lies in understanding how climate change could impact upon a specific destination, in this case Scotland, and in providing a micro analysis of that impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]