WebinarOnline
Tourism disrupted: Future scenarios, design thinking and innovating for a climate-changed world
Friday, 12 March 2027
Use scenarios and design thinking to test ideas and prepare tourism services for climate change and uncertainty.
About this event
Climate disruption, resource constraints and economic change challenge tourism strategies based on stable seasons, predictable demand and familiar operating conditions. This webinar examines how strategic foresight and scenario planning can help organisations consider several plausible futures. It will show how contrasting scenarios reveal hidden assumptions, expose dependencies and test long-term investment choices. Scenarios will be treated as structured tools for inquiry rather than predictions or narratives selected to justify a preferred organisational strategy.
Panellists will demonstrate how design thinking can translate climate evidence into practical responses through observation, problem definition, collaborative development, prototyping and revision. The discussion will consider resilient visitor services, circular operating processes and alternatives to resource-intensive business models. It will also examine power within participatory design, asking whose knowledge influences the problem and who has authority over the resulting intervention. Environmental limits and unequal exposure to climate risk will be included from the beginning rather than added after commercial concepts are developed.
Participants will gain a practical process for connecting future scenarios with present decisions. They will learn to identify early signals, test proposals under different conditions and revise assumptions as evidence changes. The session will also consider how residents, workers and local suppliers can participate meaningfully in developing adaptation strategies. Delegates will leave equipped to use foresight and design methods together, creating innovations that remain useful across uncertainty while avoiding solutions that protect visitor experiences by transferring costs or risks to host communities. This approach makes experimentation purposeful, transparent and responsive to public evidence.