Understanding methods of intervention to strengthen entrepreneurial innovation in climate change adaptation in the Magdalen Islands and the Laurentides region, leading tourist areas

Like many human activities, tourism already has to adapt to climate change. However, the industry’s fragmentation into a multitude of sub-sectors, its seasonal constraints and the small sizes of the businesses can hinder the ability to take action. Tourism can adapt to climate change through innovative, unifying initiatives that bring together small and medium-sized tourist businesses, local institutions and scientists who can explain the effects of climate change. These initiatives should make it possible to engage tourism organizations with the issue of climate change so that they can feel capable of adapting. This collaborative research project encourages small and medium-sized tourism businesses in the Magdalen Islands and the Laurentides region to develop and experiment with climate change adaptation measures.

• Identify the impacts of climate change on the value chain associated with regional tourism  resources and the innovation needs of its components 

• Document the open innovation process implemented by the regions and identify the barriers and accelerators

• Support the tourism industry’s preparation with guidance, easy-to-understand information, and knowledge transfer

• Conceptualize a value chain at the scale of the tourist destination for the two regions studied 

• Develop a mobile living lab to take action at three levels: the tourism site, the tourism business, and institutional adaptation policies and strategies

• Mobilize participating organizations with the support of local partners 

• Gain an understanding of the issues experienced by participants through different methods such as empathetic interviews, group interviews, and surveys 

• Conduct co-creation workshops and experiment with climate change adaptation solutions inspired by collaborative approaches, design thinking, human-centred design and collective experimentation to encourage creativity and empathy

• Get experts involved and carry out literature reviews to support this experimentation

This project enabled the tourist regions under study to initiate four experiments in response to various issues experienced by tourism stakeholders, such as coastal erosion, ecosystem changes, strong winds, extreme precipitation, floods, and forest fires. They were: 

• The planting of northern bayberry for bank stabilization

• The development of a consistent discourse in layman’s terms on the impacts of climate change to raise awareness among tourism stakeholders and to train guides

• The production of a podcast on the process of adapting the tourism offer of Château Madelinot

• The development of a questionnaire to identify the dominant eco-emotions of guides and employees

• Initiation of a concerted thinking process on how to ensure a forest’s climate resilience

• The acquisition of portable weather stations for visitor and employee safety and managing cancellations

• The production of a podcast on the process of adapting the Rafting Nouveau Monde infrastructure

In addition, the mobile living laboratory’s guidance and activities helped participating organizations gain knowledge on climate change adaptation and understand the impacts of climate change. This project generated a number of learnings, allowing several recommendations to be formulated. These recommendations are for the various parties that have been identified within the tourist destinations’ value chain, in order to strengthen entrepreneurial innovation in climate change adaptation. At the end of the project, a resource offering guidance on providing support for innovation in climate change adaptation was created for those supporting tourism organizations.

This project is partly funded by the Government of Quebec and meets the objectives of the Plan pour une économie verte 2030.

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