Weather, climate change and business models: perspectives on future sustainability from heritage tourism organisations

Little prior research has investigated the relationship between weather and the performance of business models in complex, multi-site tourism organisations in the context of future climate change. Novel in scale and scope, through big datasets this paper examines how different facets of visitation and revenue generation varied by daily weather conditions at multiple attractions operated by two major heritage tourism organisations in the three financial years before the COVID-19 pandemic. For each organisation, significant differences were observed in member and paying visitors as well as among retail and food-and-beverage sales on days categorised by different levels of relative comfort defined by the Holiday Comfort Index (HCI-Urban). Using the United Kingdom Climate Projections 2018 for RCP8.5, three trajectories for future weather, visitation and revenue were modelled for 2020–2080. As a first contribution of its type, the paper argues that understanding of tourism organisational futures under climate change should be informed by theorisation of business models. More integrated analysis involving the multiple components of business models suggests that an exclusive focus on the financial value that may result from improved weather conditions, can be misleading and understate the scale of challenge for sustainable management and resilience of organisations.