Building climate resilience in the accommodation and tourism sectors

Heatwaves, wildfires and floods are no longer stress-test scenarios for European hotels. They now happen every year, and they show up in the accounts: higher energy and insurance costs, business interruption and cancelled bookings.

In this white paper, we look at how climate change is reshaping the economics of the accommodation and tourism sectors. Europe is warming roughly two to three times faster than the global average (Copernicus), and the countries that attract most European hotel investment are among those where heat, wildfires and drought are intensifying fastest. Demand is already shifting: 74% of travellers say they take extreme heat into account when choosing a destination (Booking.com Travel & Sustainability Report 2026), while insurance spending in the hotel sector rose by 19.5% in 2023 (CBRE).

The paper sets out the physical, transition and nature-related risks hotels face, the opportunities adaptation opens up for operations and destinations, and a four-step approach to building an adaptation plan: screen, assess, prioritise and plan, implement and monitor. An illustrative case of a hotel group with 60 properties shows how to move from portfolio-wide screening to a site-level flood adaptation plan, comparing modelled losses before and after adaptation.

If you own, operate or invest in hotels and want to know which properties need attention first, download the paper below!