Regional Mountain Conference

Mountain destinations increasingly face the challenge of balancing rising outdoor tourism demand with social responsibility, accessibility, community well-being and climate adaption. Innovative management pathways are required to ensure that destination development supports socially sustainable transformation rather than exacerbating spatial conflicts, exclusion or safety risks. Real-world laboratories offer a promising approach to address these challenges by embedding research directly within destination contexts and fostering continuous exchange between science, practice and local stakeholders.

Since 2016, the Institute for Outdoor Sport and Environmental Science (IOSU) has accompanied the sustainable development of the Stubai Valley (Tyrol, Austria) as an outdoor destination functioning as a real-world laboratory. Central to this long-term cooperation is the WildeWasserWeg, a core tourism product that combines barrier-free sections and viewing platforms with more demanding trail segments to address accessibility, inclusion and diverse user needs. On behalf of the Tourism Association Stubai Tirol, IOSU implemented a long-term visitor monitoring programme capturing spatial and temporal use patterns, visitor intensities, weather influences, and user behaviour and satisfaction. These data provide an empirical basis for responsible visitor management, infrastructure adaptation and socially sensitive product development that balances visitor experience with local capacity limits.

Building on this foundation, a series of student theses and a doctoral dissertation expanded the real-world laboratory by integrating GPS-based movement analysis, surveys and behavioural modelling. The research addressed spatial concentration, discrepancies between planned and actual walking times, and individual performance variability within hiking groups. Resulting recommendations focused on inclusive information and guidance systems, improved communication of route requirements and safety, and measures supporting both accessibility and accident prevention.

Across all projects, IOSU acted as a knowledge broker at the science–practice interface, translating empirical findings into decision-relevant insights while incorporating community, management and practitioner perspectives into research design. The Stubai Valley case illustrates how real-world laboratories can enable socially sustainable destination transformation through responsible knowledge brokerage in mountain regions.