DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK FOR ASSESSING RESILIENCE OF TOURISM SUB-SYSTEMS TO CLIMATIC FACTORS

• Successful application of the resilience framework for a tourist destination.
• Identification of factors and thresholds that affect resilience to climate variability.
• Exploration of potential for further operationalizing of tourism resilience framework.
• Interdisciplinary approach that integrates across ecological and social sciences.

Some researchers have argued that resilience is a useful concept for understanding impacts on social-ecological systems, such as tourist destinations. This paper presents the development of a resilience framework for tourist destinations with a particular focus on climatic disturbances or stress, and their impacts on tourism activity sub-systems. Building on the model of a ‘stability landscape’, this research uses primary data from the Queenstown-Wanaka destination in New Zealand to evaluate the concept of resilience and to formulate surrogates that describe the factors that shape resilience. Challenges for future research, including the proactive building of resilience, are outlined. This research represents a good example of an interdisciplinary approach that transcends existing epistemologies in tourism.