Recreation and nature tourism are increasingly important activities with many implications both economic and environmental. As society changes so the demands and trends for recreation and nature tourism change and develop. This poses many challenges for planners and managers of recreational areas and providers of services. This review article focuses on the situation in Europe but does not ignore some major trends and issues arising elsewhere, while much of the research can be traced back to ideas and methods developed elsewhere, such as the U.S.A. To set the scene the main social and environmental trends are presented that show how the changing nature of society feeds through in expectations and demands for recreation and nature tourism. Demographic changes, consumer behaviour and the increasingly mobile and connected lifestyles of European citizens have produced trends for outdoor This review is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Germany License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/de/ 2 Simon Bell, Liisa Tyrväinen, Tuija Sievänen, Ulrike Pröbstl and Murray Simpson recreation preferences and for broadening travel horizons. Knowing about these trends enables planners and entrepreneurs to change their recreation or tourism offer to meet these demands. However, these demands have to be seen in the context of changing pressures and sensitivities of the environments, frequently natural, in which recreation and nature tourism activities are located. Climate change is a prime example of these pressures. Many countries have developed sophisticated survey and other monitoring tools and instruments to identify demand, to monitor levels and types of activity, changing preferences and pressures on the environment. While recreation is often led by demand from people who wish to participate in certain activities there are also increasingly well recognised benefits to health and well-being from closer contact with nature. Policy makers in the health sphere are taking a keen interest in this and in the means for encouraging sedentary populations to engage with physical activity in natural environments. The evidence base for this is improving and is reviewed in this paper. Management of environments and visitors produces many conflicts which must be resolved. Recent surveys of forest recreation have enabled a European-wide pattern to be identified which will help planners and managers identify issues to be considered.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to survey climate change impacts on winter sport tourists' activity and destination choice, to estimate shifts in customer demand and to provide recommendations and decision support for destination management.Design/methodology/approach -A total of 540 skiers from Vienna, Austria were surveyed with a standardized online questionnaire. The survey also contained a discrete choice experiment a stated preference method which forces respondents into trade-off behavior between various possible combinations of destination profiles.Findings -The results show a strong preference for destination attributes promising sufficient (natural) snow conditions. In winters that lack snow, resorts in high destinations gain importance and travel distances lose some relevance. A large proportion of skiers would forgo skiing if it becomes more expensive. Snow independent substitutes are accepted as a short time compensation but not for the whole winter holiday. When asked to trade off additional costs and additional travel distances for a snow secure destination, the majority of winter sport tourists are willing to incur some additional cost but the majority reach thresholds at about 10 percent additional cost and 2h additional driving.Originality/value -The survey shows, that a discrete choice experiment is a suitable method to cover the complexity of activity and destination choice. Therefore it is an unique individual-oriented approach to consider customer demand and to evaluate the success of offer setting in tourism management. The sequential presentation of three related choice sets is a novel contribution in the field of choice experiments, and appears to be well suited to simulate climate change-related effects.

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To tackle the global problem of climate change, it will be crucial that the global economic system adopts energy-saving measures and furthers its reliance on renewable energy sources. This challenge is particularly relevant for the tourism industry, which depends on transportation by definition, and is highly dependent on resources and energy in many other regards. Tourism can quickly be caught in a vicious cycle: the necessity to adapt to climate change, i.e. by increasing artificial snow making, or new product development as exemplified by the "wellness-boom", leads to ever higher rates of energy consumption, thus further contributing to climate change. However, the fledgling human explorations towards combating climate change and increasing energy efficiency also offer innovative opportunities for exploring new niches of tourism. This paper presents how such novel tourism opportunities avail themselves around the theme of renewable and sustainable energy use. Combining environmental education and experiencing novel products can be used for marketing a fundamentally new tourism product, which attracts both the technologically interested tourism segment and the family-oriented traveler. This may lead to positive perception of climate change adaptation strategies.A summary of "model" energy regions in Central Europe describes the typical characteristics that regions must have for possibly developing these innovative tourism niches. The main focus of the paper is on "eco-energy region" of Guessing, Burgenland, which is involved in an on-going transnational research project -for sustainable tourism development in Central Europe (Interreg IVB). The area around Austria's only energy self sufficient city (Güssing) is situated in a nature park at the eastern foothills of the Alps. Due to the mild climate this region is a part of the so called "Austrian Tuscany". Multicultural influences by the proximity to Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia are reflected by various cultural, especially culinary experiences. Due to its location along the former iron curtain, the region has remained fairly remote and is not recognized as a tourism destination. However, with the eco-energy project of Guessing gaining world-wide recognition, it became obvious that in addition to the business and conference driven energy tourism, an opportunity for a leisure oriented tourism development also availed itself. This paper presents the innovative strategies that the region will focus on in order to expand to a more complete and sustainable energy-tourism destination.