Abstract
With more than 100 million guest arrivals each year, the Alps are one of the most important tourism regions worldwide. However, tourism causes conflicts between the utilisation and conservation of alpine nature and high-value cultural landscapes. The article shows that nature is of outstanding importance to alpine holiday-makers. Yet it appears that alpine nature is primarily perceived as an area in which to undertake activities rather than a matter that is near to the heart. Therefore, the tourism sector designs its provision in that direction. It anticipates customer expectations as well as the impacts of long-term drivers such as climatic or demographic changes. The resulting adaptation measures create new conflicts although a broad knowledge of how to design tourism services more sustainably exists. Therefore, in future the focus must be placed on anchoring the principles of sustainability in Alpine tourism governance.