Franciska Korthuis, under the supervision of Maaike de Jong, Researcher ETFI, wrote her bachelor dissertation about the future of tourism in the Costa Brava and the possible integration of mass- and sustainable tourism. Korthuis used the methodology of scenario planning in order to address different paths to the future. The tourism industry in Northern Spain has been growing steadily ever since the Second World War. The UNWTO (UNWTO, 2011) and Weaver (Weaver D. B., 2001) say that it is possible for all tourism to be sustainable this includes mass tourism. However, Hickman (Hickman, 2006) says it could be the cause of the world losing its wonders. E-mail communications were conducted with David Weaver (Professor of tourism research), Elena Cavagnaro (Professor Service Studies), Bas Amelung (Assistant Professor in environmental systems analysis) and Paul Peeters (Professor sustainable transport & tourism). Each of these people had different trends and issues they thought were most important, therefore, a list of 12 trends was drafted to summarize Korthuis' findings:

• Trend 1 Climate change, has a high impact and a high unpredictability. As nobody knows how quick or slow it is happening and what regions will be affected in which way.
• Trend 2 Peak oil, also has a high impact and a high unpredictability the same as trend 1. It is unpredictable because it is not known how much oil the earth has left and if it is reachable, another influence on this trend is wars with the Middle East. Also another impact is the development of different fuels. And as mentioned both climate change and peak oil are influenced by the use of oil, climate change is influenced by the emissions of these oils and peak oil is influenced by the scarceness of the oils (Penuelas & Carnicer, 2010).
• Trend 3 Tourism growth in emerging economies, has a low impact as Spain is not an emerging economy and is also rather predictable.
• Trend 4 Doubling of international tourists, this has a high impact on any destination therefore also on Spain but it is a somewhat more predictable trend.
• Trend 5 Poverty alleviation, this trend has a low impact as this is mainly focused on third world countries; the predictability is also higher then with other trends.
• Trend 6 Health, Safety, and Security, have a high impact on the whole world and is maybe even too unpredictable as new viruses are present and terrorist have different way of targeting people they want to harm.
• Trend 7 Closer, Shorter, and Cheaper holidays, this has somewhat of an influence but as Spain is in Europe all other European countries are close, but people might start to prefer shorter trips over long beach holidays, this trend is also quite predictable.
• Trend 8 Anti Globalisation, this trend has more or less the same impact as trend 7.
• Trend 9 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), has an impact on tourism in Spain as people are starting to get more aware of what kind of impact they have on nature, social structure etc. this trend is rather predictable.
• Trend 10 Socio Demographic change, this trend has an impact on Spain as the population is getting older and older, but as the population is measured and followed on how it grows it is more predictable what will happen.
• Trend 11 Changes in passenger process, this will not have such an impact on the destination itself but mainly on how people will travel in the future, it is however rather unpredictable on how it will change.
• Trend 12 Popular destinations change, this will obviously have an impact on Spain as it is a popular destination at the moment, but the trend is more predictable than the other trends mentioned before.

Once all issues had been rated towards their predictability and impact, it could be seen that two of the issues were almost as unpredictable and high in impact as each other. These two issues were then chosen to work out further with the scenario planning; the issues were climate change and peak - oil. The scenarios that were created were the following:

1. New climate in Spain creates important low season
2. Rain washes away tourists and beaches in Northern Spain
3. Oil prices through the roof yet again
4. A new fuel relieves the strain on oil a year on

These scenario's were worked out in four so-called newspaper clippings from the future a method of reflection to offer policy makers, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders some food for thought which can bee accessed here.

Korthuis in her research has shown the significance of scenario planning in tourism and the applicability of such methodologies to further research within the field.

Francika Korthuis / Maaike de Jong