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This paper aims to address lack in destination leadership and to propose a new typology of approaches. Frequently, rural tourism is suggested as a remedy that should enhance the local economy, create new jobs, strengthen the regional identity and finance the infrastructure.

Case study analysis shows that regions, communities, tourism organizations and managers use different strategies to strengthen their tourism offers or to develop new ones. The paper analyzes different development approaches among destinations and discusses their respective leadership structure.

The typology of tourism development models makes the different development options transparent and easy to understand. This may aid a community to support tourism development with spatial planning and avoid conflicts with other forms of land uses. Overall, leadership for rural tourism development should lead to a strategic cooperation between tourism businesses and other organizations based on a commitment to destination coherence.

The chosen research approach is based on the analysis of Central European case studies. Therefore, researchers of other geographical backgrounds are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

The presented typology illustrated four distinct options of coherent development strategies, which can support communities/regions to find a long-term decision frame.

The presented typology facilitates collaborative planning, helps operationalize rural tourism development policies and provides the foundation for spatial planning, all of which furthers the linkages between tourism and other sectors in the rural economy.

The effects of climate change are no longer a distant, slow-paced, future phenomenon. Due to the high dependency on reliable snow conditions, the tourism sector in Austria will need to rapidly implement adaptation measures to forego further negative impacts. However, the framing of the subject in tourism is already difficult and complex. Despite an increase in climate change awareness, the necessary collective change seems to be deliberately tardy and adaptation processes are slowly considered in political decision-making. Strategic documents on tourism policy are still lacking clear information about this challenging task and suitable strategies. Against this background, the chapter at hand discusses instruments and pathways to deal with wicked problems using climate change and winter tourism in Austria as an example. The adaptation processes for winter tourism make it possible to describe different strategies, such as normative authoritative ones, evidence-based technocratic problem-solving, incremental adjustments or participatory processes and to analyse them using case studies. It becomes clear that evidence-based, normative or participatory approaches all have their strengths and weaknesses. While, on the policy level in Austria, the discussion about the right instruments has just started, a closer look at the project-based level shows the significant potential of a bottom-up approach. However, what is required is more exchange between governmental levels, a transparent distribution of responsibilities, detailed adaptation monitoring and reliable climate-proofing of new and existing policies. Currently, it is the bottom-up processes that show more courage for change and effective implementation of measures against global warming.

Climate change will lead to new environmental conditions in winter sport destinations. Even if the motivations of the visitors remain the same, climate change will inevitably influence their behavior. At the same time, tourism destinations try to influence visitor behavior by implementing adaptation strategies and offering new products. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of possible consumer research approaches from a destination's perspective.

In order to study the influence of climate change on winter destinations in Austria, the authors adapted an existing behavioral framework to the model for proactive tourist adaptation to climate change, which is helpful to understand the influencing factors and the individual decision‐making process towards adaptation intention. Thereafter they used the results of a choice experiment (=intended behavior) to calibrate a decision support tool (DST) for a cross‐country skiing destination in Austria.

The paper presents a DST based on the choice experiment. The DST shows the changing market shares for three segments as a destination and its entrepreneurs attempt to identify the best opportunities for the various adaption strategies they can possibly consider. The authors suggest this as a suitable market research tool for proactive destination management.

Compared to the theory of planned behavior (TPB), Choice experiments (CE) are less suitable to contribute to the understanding of behavior; at the same time, CEs are well suited to model intended behavior, and to predict the demand for currently non‐existing alternatives when past behavior might be a poor predictor.

The authors propose a conceptual framework that explicitly combines the modeling of behavior and behavioral intention with relevant concepts of the individual customer's cognitive process. The authors want to ensure that destination managers are able to understand, and eventually direct and influence travel behavior as it relates to their local conditions, which in the context of climate change implies that the destination must lay the foundation for tomorrow's success while competing today.

The paper focuses on two main challenges related to destination choice in the context of climate change: tourists encounter a rather unique decision context, as their decision to visit is completely voluntary, and predicting visitor reactions to climate change enters uncharted waters as clients have not encountered these situations before.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is widely agreed that transformation processes that are triggered by crisis events can challenge conventional behavioural norms and stimulate new ideas and innovations that can assist in the preparations for future challenges. This impetus for transformation processes not only applies to the COVID-19 pandemic, but has also been seen in many other instances, such as the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 or the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, which have sparked significant socio-political change processes often with a global reach. The multitude of wicked tourism policy problems discussed in our book often occur in parallel, are of growing complexities, are often not well understood and indistinguishable from one another and exert pressure on the resilience of vulnerable political, economic and community-based systems. These circumstances often present as tipping points which can trigger necessary long-term transformations. However, this process of long-term change must be well planned and strategically implemented. Thus, future transformative destination management should be built on a holistic approach, underpinned by adaptive political leadership in which tourism is not only seen as a driver for economic growth and employment, but as a strategy which successfully integrates social, cultural and ecological goals.

According to Head (2008), wicked problems are not just wicked problems in the sense of complex challenges, but situations that are confusing, unique, diffuse, without clear responsibilities or accountabilities, and difficult to resolve. These problems stand out for their uncertain nature, lack of clear solutions and possible irreversible consequences of attempted interventions. Recognising the pertinence of wicked problems in contemporary public policy discourse, this chapter aims to explore and better understand political decision-makers’ handling of these issues, in a tourism-specific context. The discourse on wicked problems, in accordance with 10 characteristics outlined by Rittel and Webber (1973), remains relevant when examining policy responses to mega trends, such as indigenous disparities, sustainability, digital transformation and demographic change. Against this backdrop and positioned within current academic discourse, this introductory chapter briefly foreshadows the volume’s various contributions by academics from around the world who present a wide range of wicked problems in tourism from their respective perspectives and contexts.

This study aims to investigate low-carbon footprint travel choices, considering both destination attributes and climate change perceptions, and examine the impacts of nudging (a communication tool to alter individuals’ choices in a predictable way) on tourists’ preferences for carbon mitigation in destinations.

A discrete choice experiment questionnaire was administered to a sample of 958 Hong Kong respondents. Hybrid choice modeling was used to examine the respondents’ preferences for destination attributes and to explain preference heterogeneity using tourists’ climate change perceptions. The respondents’ willingness to pay for the destination attributes was also calculated to measure the monetary value of the attributes.

Destination type, carbon emissions and travel cost had significant effects on tourists’ choices of destination. Nudging increased tourists’ preference for low-carbon footprint choices. Tourists with higher climate change perceptions were more likely than others to select low-carbon destinations with carbon offset projects.

The findings of this study provide an impetus for destination management organizations to support local carbon offset projects, implement policies that mitigate carbon emissions and develop sustainable tourism to fulfill tourists’ demand for low-carbon footprint travel choices. Based on the findings, policymakers could promote sustainable tourism by publishing relevant climate change information on social media.

This study addressed a gap in the literature on tourist travel choice by considering carbon emission-related attributes and climate change perceptions and by confirming the role of nudging in increasing the choice of low-carbon destinations.