Tourism, Climate Change and Well-Being: The Products’ Diversity as an Opportunity

Mediterranean destinations are mostly based on sun and beach tourism through the qualification of its coastal assets, which establishes a framework of low diversification of their regional socioeconomy that will encounter climate change as a challenge that could constitute a potential threat of disruptive impact to these regions, specially, when looking to the expected sea level rise and inherent beach area loss. Thereby, it becomes necessary to plan an adaptation pathway in order to enhance the regional resilience of the Mediterranean regions in a changing climate, not found on a contingency plan for survival, but grounded on an opportunistic strategy in favour of well-being and happiness. As such, the promotion of tourism product diversification could contribute to increment diversity and innovation, major contributory factors of regional resilience, so destinations can avoid decline facing future degradations. Hence, it is paramount to find alternative and sustainable tourism products beyond and beside sun and beach, mainly sustained on regional green infrastructure, which can only be put in place through the study of experts’ opinion about the suitability of tourism diversification within each Mediterranean region, the public actors’ awareness about the importance of resource enhancement in the context of sustainable tourism, and the willingness of tour operators to implement this diversification strategy of tourism products. Applied to the case study of a Mediterranean climate region, Algarve, southern Portugal, this chapter presents the experts, public actors and tour operators concerns about this opportunistic strategy that could improve the happiness of tourists through a diversified experience within the abiotic, biotic and cultural basis of each destination, and the well-being increase of residents that depend on tourism, so they can find, proactively, resilient and diverse ways of development.