Purpose The purpose of the paper is to explore how climate change and the discourses about adaptation to climate change are altering the spatial development of the tourism industry in coastal destinations. The paper also identifies how tourist development and climate change adaptation can be combined to transform space and place, especially in coastal tourism areas. Design/methodology/approach Using a theoretical approach based on the concept of production of space, the study focuses on relational space, relationships expressed through representations of space and social practices. A case study method is used to analyze the socio-geographic processes at work in the adaptation to climate change in a coastal tourism community in Quebec, Canada. The analysis of the study utilized Nvivo with thematic textual queries. Findings The results reveal an adaptation process at work, based on a “hold the line” strategy, where private stakeholders choose to invest in defensive structures to mitigate the impact of rising sea levels and erosion. This strategy reflects coordinated action in the face of the risk and to protect high-value land property. Research limitations/implications This research illustrates how tourism and climate change adaptation discourses intersect. It also reveals how tourism development promotes the values and image of coastal space and how this can conflict with an efficient climate change adaptation strategy. Originality/value This research provides guidelines for coastal tourism communities, enabling them to design their own climate change adaptation strategy, taking into account how the different social discourses and tourism practices interact with climate change adaptation. It also provides some insights into the criteria that influence an effective climate change adaptation strategy.

Climate change makes the tourism industry vulnerable, as many of its resources will be heavily impacted by its effects. Coastal destinations are likely to be the most affected by rising sea levels and extreme weather events, calling for a sociospatial analysis of the dynamics of peripheral coastal tourism communities. Using a production of space framework, we describe how tourism space is produced and (re)produced in two Canadian communities located along the St. Lawrence River estuary: Tadoussac and Notre‐Dame‐du‐Portage. A case study methodology including observation, semistructured interviews, and discourses analysis is applied to deconstruct the sociospatial process of climate change adaptation. The main findings stress the importance of discourse and land tenure strategies used by different stakeholders. Managers of publicly owned land tend to make environmental strategies (green infrastructure) central to their adaptation strategies, whereas private land owners tend to use man‐made interventions (grey infrastructure) and closing space strategies to protect and enhance their land values in response to the increasing threat and evidence of climate change impacts. The results call for further research that takes the social processes of value creation embedded in land tenure and land markets into account.

The research aims to explore how climate change and the discourses about adaptation to climate change are altering the spatial development of the tourism industry in coastal destinations in the periphery. Firstly, we will review the consequences of climate change for the coastal environment and tourism. Then, we will present the role of space in the adaption of the tourism industry. The reproduction of the coastal tourism space in the context of adaptation to climate change will be illustrated by two case studies in Eastern Québec in Canada -the communities of Tadoussac on the north shore of the St-Lawrence River and of Notre-Dame-du-Portage on the south shore.

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