Exploring Climate Change-Induced Loss and Damage in African Tourism Destinations: Implications for Destination Marketing and Tourist Satisfaction

Climate change has disrupted livelihoods, businesses, and the future of the planet Earth. Tourism destinations have been pinpointed as one of the likely to be severely negatively impacted by climatic changes. Considering the aforesaid, the study aims to explore the climate change induced loss and damage in African tourism destinations and also assess actions that have possibly been take to avert the situation from deteriorating. The study adopted a qualitative research design and utilized secondary data including reputable and relevant company reports, Google Scholar and Scopus articles, and book chapters with themes on climate change, destinations loss and damage, Africa, floods, cyclones, storm surges, heatwaves, rising temperatures, ocean acidification, economic loss and non-economic loss. Thematic analysis was performed. The study found that climate change-induced loss and damage in tourist destinations included tourists death, ocean acidification, tourist facilities destruction, closure of beaches, loss of bio-biodiversity, land and forest degradation, economic losses, non-economic losses, sudden onslaught on the environment and gradual yet inevitable negative repercussions. The study implies negative tourism destination marketing and tourism marketing and reduced business from the potential host destination and negative destination perception, dissatisfaction, and increased perceived risk from the tourists’ perspective. The study recommends feasible mitigation, adaptation, and resilience strategies to ameliorate the loss and damage to tourist destinations.