Adaptation & Resilience
Problem Overview: India’s tourism sector is highly exposed and unprepared to address climate risks
India’s Tourism and Hospitality sector contributed the sector contributed ~US$ 250.2 billion to the GDP in CY24 and is on track to grow to ~US$ 511.5 billion by CY34, supporting nearly 63 million jobs [1]. The sector is also increasingly exposed to floods, landslides, storms and heat across tourism heavy regions including himalayas and coastal states like Kerala and Orissa.
There is a need to build sector-wide resilience which would protect not only revenues, jobs, occupancy, and destination reputation, but also reduces post-disaster repair costs and revenue volatility for operators and governments. This is especially relevant to private sector players in the sector as well as financial institutions and insurance companies as they all lose money when climate shocks degrade asset performance or raise claims and credit risk.
Core Bottlenecks: Lack of granular climate-risk data, practical adaptation tools, and financing for retrofits or upgrading buildings ahead of shocks.
The problem is faced by asset owners and operators in tourism and hospitality, including hotels, resorts, homestays, destination developers, and government tourism boards.Currently, solutions are fragmented using a patchwork of conventional building standards, reactive maintenance, basic disaster recovery, and generic risk or insurance products. Critical challenges remain:
1. Current solutions do not address destination-specific climate resilience at the scale needed
2. Tourism assets are highly local and interruption-sensitive: one flood, landslide, heatwave, storm, or road closure can cut occupancy, damage structures, disrupt utilities and impact reputation.
3. At scale, the sector is still underprepared because most players lack granular climate-risk data, practical adaptation tools, and the financing to retrofit buildings or upgrade systems ahead of shocks. Even where insurance exists, it often responds after losses rather than preventing them, and public recovery funding is usually fragmented and slow.
Existing Approaches and Technology Readiness
Weather Protection
Platforms for hospitality and travel sector
Coastal safety
Sensors, detecting drowning, hazardous waves and currents
Early wildfire detection sensor
directly relevant for guesthouses and resorts in forest areas
Where is the white-space for innovation?
Efforts need to be at three distinct levels: (1) tools to improve structural resilience and retrofits for existing physical assets; (2) develop climate-smart building materials for new construction, (3) early warning and emergency operating systems to enable better response and avoid loss of lives and livelihoods.
Science Breakthrough
→Microclimate and hazard forecasting for tourist destinations, →Climate-impact attribution for tourism assets, that quantifies how weather shocks affect occupancy, access, damage, and seasonal demand in specific destinations; →Risk-to-recommendation models, that turns climate data into site-specific resilience actions that hotels and governments can actually use.
Engineering Innovation
→Climate-resilient building systems for hotels and homestays: elevated foundations, drainage, passive cooling, flood-proof utilities, and storm-hardened envelopes; → modular retrofit kits that can be deployed quickly in existing properties without full redevelopment.
Business Model / Financial
→Resilience-as-a-service for hotels and destinations: subscription risk monitoring, retrofit planning, and compliance support; →cluster-based delivery, selling to tourism belts, hotel chains, or state tourism bodies instead of one property at a time, →Outcome-linked financing, where payments are tied to reduced downtime, lower claims, or improved asset performance.
How we identify climate innovation opportunities?
- India Brand Equity Foundation. (2025, November). Indian tourism and hospitality industry analysis presentation. IBEF. [Link]
- Assumption for calculating economic potential: The figure mentioned represents what can be annual avoided losses if the sector works on becoming climate resilient. There is no national level assessment of losses to the tourism sector[link]. This number has been calculated on the basis of publicly reported losses in the following states -Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala and Sikkim and North Bengal. 2030 projections based on an conservative assumption of 5% annual loss escalation rate.
- Current government policies and schemes are aimed at making the tourism sector more eco-friendly, and not much has been done to bring standards for making the sector resilient to climate change impacts.
- International Finance Corporation (2022, January). IFC’s TechEmerge and IHCL to Pilot Sustainable Cooling Innovations in Indian Hotels. [Link]
Abbreviations: IFC - International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group); IHCL - Indian Hotels Company Ltd.
Last Updated On: June 5, 2026
Economic Potential
- India, 2025~881Mn USD
- India, 2030~1124Mn USD
Impact Potential
- Lives Impacted (increased resilience for incoming tourists, staff, and direct local community networks)4.8 mn people
- Risk Index Score, India13.5/27
- Hazard
- Exposure
- Sensitivity
- Adaptive Capacity
- Vulnerability
| Low | Med | High |
|---|---|---|
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Waste
Livelihoods
Connectivity
p-ARL Score
7/12
Regulatory Outlook
Implemented
Spotlight for innovation in India
Startups
India has a few climate-resilience startups and hospitality pilots, but these are in the sustainable and energy efficient cooling space. Currently, there are no startups for tourism-specific climate-resilient building systems, making this a clear white-space opportunity.[4]
Pilot Project by IFC: Between 2022-2024, IFC’s TechMerge partnered with IHCL and piloted nine solutions across hotel properties, and the program explicitly targeted efficient, climate-smart cooling for the hospitality sector.