Climate protection is an important component of sustainable development. The tourism industry currently lacks cross-sectoral solutions and financial means to implement sustainable solutions. KlimaCent provides a remedy and developed a financing model from and for the tourism industry. This will be demonstrated using concrete examples - the island of Juist and the Lusatian Lakeland.
There are already numerous accounting and compensation procedures for greenhouse gases in the tourism sector and several partly competing standards and labels. However, there is a lack of sector-specific solutions that could generate a willingness to pay among the target group in order to be able to finance concrete measures tailored to the individual service providers in the tourism sector.
The target group of the KlimaCent project are national tourism destinations that want to implement their own climate protection projects and generate and/or receive funding for them. Within the framework of the project, greenhouse gas reduction targets and their chain of effects will be made visible to the individual service providers of the tourism industry and concrete implementation measures will be identified that lead to a measurable reduction of greenhouse gases. In addition, a financing model in the form of a contribution fund will be developed.
The aim of the project was to develop an industry-wide financing and steering instrument for climate protection in the tourism industry. As a result of KlimaCent, the German Climate Fund for Tourism (DKT) was designed in a participatory process with the tourism industry, which is to be realised by the umbrella organisation after the end of the project. This offers the opportunity to make national tourism destinations more sustainable with a sector-oriented solution, to win over tourism service providers for a commitment to climate protection and thus to reduce the tourism footprint in Germany. In addition to the climate protection effect, the attractiveness of participating destinations is to be increased at the same time.
The initial implementation projects (sustainable building, electric mobility in local public transport) conceived in the model regions (Juist and Lausitzer Seenland) can reduce energy consumption and emissions as well as noise emissions in the model regions in the long term. This results in positive effects not only for tourists but also for local residents and an increase in the quality of life.
If it is assumed that an additional climate contribution of 1.00 euro is paid into the fund for only about 20 percent of overnight stays, and that this contribution is at least doubled by the tourism industry, the climate contribution fund would have an annual volume of about 40 million euros. If this sum were invested in alternative energies, such as photovoltaic systems, this would result in a saving of up to 16,500 t CO2 per year.
The willingness of tourists to participate in climate protection is high, according to initial surveys: In a 2013 survey, two thirds of Juist tourists said that they would be willing to spend a financial contribution per day/person to contribute to climate adaptation on the island. However, it must be ensured that the financial means are also used on the island.
Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT