Sport and tourism in mountain facing the challenges of socio-economic, climatic and technological change

Sport tourism and mountainous areas are facing major changes in a globalized world, where climate change and digital technologies growth, require from its players to take on new challenges. Depending on the stakeholder’s responsiveness, the societal, economic, cultural and technological changes we can observe in the Alpine macro-region and in other extra-continental mountains regions may be considered as consequences or adaptations. Sport and mountain tourism, which represent a significant economic and social weight, are no exception to this trend and call adaptive and innovative responses. Companies, resorts, sportsmen, consumers, institutions and territories (in the sense of tourist destinations open to the world) should find solutions through individual and collective innovation. They have to adapt their strategies, organizations and governance models to remain competitive and attractive. Otherwise, the risk relating to these major changes and their social consequences (insecurity, inequality, loss of employment, etc.) become larger and menacing.

The adaptation to changes raises questions relating to specific characteristics of sport tourism and mountainous areas as recomposition of territories and economic or professional activities; the dynamic of the actors (companies, consumers, and institutions), society evolution; the role and types of innovation, and the way researchers approach these interrogations. Indeed, in this new context, questioning the practices of scientific research and the revival of theoretical approaches appears to be an important point to be developed.

In this context of major changes, we also need to consider the new needs of societies, individuals, businesses and institutions. The matter of the evolution of sports tourism markets (and particularly in mountain areas), in the socio-economic and geopolitical sense, deserves to be debated, even enlightened on this occasion. Indeed, it should examine the factors and models of competition between territories, destinations, European and international macro-regions not only in economic terms (quantity and price ...), but also in sociological terms (social logic of actors and organizations ...), marketing (attractiveness of destinations ...), historical (dynamic of occupations and skills ...), geographic (territorial recomposition ...), geopolitical (impact of conflicts ...), technology (mastery of digital ...), etc.

Setting out from this, the call for papers is open to all disciplines and researchers that may contribute to further enlighten the general theme of change in sport tourism and particularly in the mountains areas. The multidisciplinary proposals, combining theoretical viewpoints and innovative methodological approaches arising from the interaction between social sciences and humanities or between the latter and other sciences (e g. environmental, information, etc.) will have a particular attention.