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Abstract |
In the face of the cumulative effects of climate and societal changes, mountain touristic development is currently experiencing a strong adaptive injunction of mountain tourism destinations. Alpine tourism development model based on seasonal snow resources and winter sports resorts is subject to uncertainties and weaknesses that brought it to a tipping point (Bourdeau, 2007; Clivaz & al., 2015). These call into question existing economic balances, territorial dynamics and mountain policies. In this tipping phenomenon, climate change acts as an amplifier and accelerator of structural contradictions, especially as its multiple effects combine themselves with societal, socio-cultural and technological changes. In this context, tourism is faced with a major transitional challenge having both spatial and temporal characteristics. This structural redefinition of the foundations of mountain tourism suffers from a major lack of knowledge on the governance and visitor flows of less-developed mountain areas. What is at stake is a transition trajectory based on a territorial rebalancing between less-developed mountain areas and developed mountain areas, which appears particularly strategic on the scale of the Swiss and French Alps. In this presentation we will present a French-Swiss research project called Mountain huts as observatories of the tourism transition. The repositioning of less-developed mountain areas and their related professions in the French-Swiss Alps (HutObsTour). |
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