What impact does the retreating Titlis Glacier have on the future tourism and economy of the Engelberg valley?

Contents

1 Introduction
1.1 Fieldwork question
1.2 Hypothesis
1.3 Syllabus links
1.4 Geographic context
1.5 Excursion

2 Methods of investigation

3 Analysis
3.1 Results
3.2 Diagrams and tables
3.3 Discussion

4 Conclusion

5 Evaluation

6 Work cited

7 Appendices
7.1 Questionnaire
7.2 Excursion protocol

1 Introduction

1.1 Fieldwork question

What impact does the retreating¹ Titlis Glacier have on future tourism and economy of the Engelberg valley?

1.2 Hypothesis

According to the results of the questionnaire², the retreating Titlis Glacier will cause the number of glacier sight-seeing tourists to decrease. This will cause economy to suffer. However, tourists travelling to Engelberg to do snow sports will still visit Engelberg as much as before.

I reached this hypothesis observing a lot of tourists just visiting the Titlis glacier on the “Klein Titlis”. They do not seem to be interested in any other attraction in the area. Without the Titlis glacier they will probably not visit Engelberg anymore. Winter sports tourists will still visit because the slopes can be preserved if required with snow canons.

1.3 Syllabus links

The fieldwork question is firstly linked to the topic “extreme environments”. This links to Engelberg because Engelberg is situated in an alpine region surrounded by tall mountains. The second syllabus topic is linked to “leisure, tourism and sports”. Engelberg is a tourist and mountain sports destination. “Global climate – vulnerability and resilience” is another syllabus, since the climate change has a great effect on snow conditions and the glacial retreat.

1.4 Geographic context

The reason we chose our location for the fieldwork to be done at Engelberg is because Engelberg has the perfect environment to question tourists visiting the retreating Titlis glacier. The Titlis glacier is in fact retreating as seen in picture 1 (This was deleted by the editors due to copyright issues). Since the Titlis glacier is part of Engelberg’s economy, it is also possible to look at the economy in relation to tourism. Engelberg is situated at 1000 meters above mean sea level, meaning there is a lot of snow in winter attracting snow sports tourists.

1.5 Excursion

To get a better understanding of the glacial retreat, we visited Titlis. Unfortunately, it was not possible to take our own picture of the glacier due to bad weather conditions. However, an interview with Mr B.³ extended our general knowledge about glaciers and tourists.

2 Methods of investigation

To gather our data, we used two methods of investigation. The first one was our questionnaire. Our goal was to identify what kind of tourists perform what kind of activities. Questions were about their home country, their age, their reason for traveling to Engelberg and other relevant aspects. We asked them specifically if they would still visit Engelberg if the Titlis glacier would vanish. We then compared the answers from people doing winter sports to people doing glacier sight-seeing. This is a quantitative method of investigation. The reason for this is because we made a statistic and did not analyse individual answers. This data helps to predict which groups of people will not visit Engelberg in the future due to the lack of the possibility to do their preferred activity. A sample of the questionnaire can be found in the appendix.

The next method of investigation used was qualitative. We also had to figure out how Engelberg will look in the future. If we don't know how long the Titlis glacier will probably remain to exist, we can't make predictions on future tourism. We researched about this aspect and many others, also considering economy.

After collecting the data we had to make it analysable. The data was transferred to an excel spreadsheet as seen in figure 1. For questions one to seven, the answer given by the proband was simply entered into the table. For question eight, a column for every keyword was created. We then either put true or false in the field, meaning either the proband ticked this option or not. For questions nine to twenty-one we entered a one into the table for "applies precisely" and a four for "doesn't apply". With this method we could see how many people chose what and we were able to calculate the average answer.

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

After entering the data, we had to evaluate it. We first added a filter to each column as seen in figure 2. This gave us the possibility to for example look at only winter sports tourists. We could also add filters to multiple columns to for example analyse all the Swedish winter sports tourists. After applying the needed filter, we created diagrams from this data. We created these diagrams by determining how many times something was written down. We did this by using the command "countif" in excel as seen in figure 3. For questions nine to twenty-one, though, creating diagrams would not be as effective as creating tables. In the table we were able to show not only how many people chose which option but we could also determine the average answer which is pictured by the grey cross.

For this assessment I decided to look at questions 1 to 7 because we need to get a basic understanding of what the person is like, what their interests are and where they come from to then be able to see which groups of people won't visit Engelberg anymore. Questions nine to eleven are relevant as well because they give information about if a tourist will visit again or not, depending on the future conditions. Knowing all this, we can then make assumptions on the future of tourism because we know which kinds of people will not visit anymore. We can then, based on the information, make assumptions about the economy, because we know what kind of people will not be there anymore and therefore, things, that were particularly done by them, might not be lucrative anymore.

3 Analysis

3.1 Results

To present the data, the pie chart or a table was used. The pie chart is useful because you instantly see if anything is dominant. The table was very useful to display four options as seen on the second page of the questionnaire. You can read off how many people ticked what and you can read off the mean answer (grey cross). Questions one to seven are relevant to the hypothesis, because we need to be able to characterise the people who will not visit Engelberg anymore to see the effects on the economy.

From the data, we can conclude that most tourists visit Engelberg for either glacier sight-seeing or to do winter sports as seen in diagram 1. People visiting for winter sports are mostly from either Switzerland or Sweden, are usually aged up to about 45 years old, stay for at most a week, only visit in winter and both genders are present equally as seen in diagrams 2 to 6. Winter sports tourists usually also say that it only partially applies, that they visit Engelberg for the glacier as seen in table 1. They also say that they would visit Engelberg without the glacier, but they wouldn’t visit Engelberg without snow as seen in tables 2 and 3. People visiting for glacier sight-seeing are almost only Asian, mostly Chinese or Indian. They visit as much in summer as in winter, are usually aged under 45, stay about 1 day and both genders are present equally as seen in diagrams 7 to 11. People visiting for glacier sight-seeing also say it more likely applies, that they would not visit Engelberg without the glacier and they say that not visiting Engelberg without snow more likely applies too as seen in tables 4 and 5. One day tourists are generally more likely not to visit Engelberg if the glacier disappears as seen in table 6. This is about the equivalent to glacier sight-seeing tourists, since they are usually one day tourists. Also, all the glacier sight-seeing diagrams can be applied to Asian tourists as well, since 96% of all glacier sight-seeing tourists are Asian, as seen in diagram 7. Tourists staying longer than one day say they would most likely visit Engelberg even though there is no glacier anymore.

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¹ Observational data predict a global retreat of glaciers („Global Glacier Recession | National Snow and Ice Data Center“)

² The questionnaire was handed to 130 tourists in Engelberg from all over the world, mainly from Asia, Sweden or Switzerland.

³ Head of security at Titlis Bergbahnen AG for many years