, the framework is employed as a structuring tool for adaptation-related trade-off reasoning, elucidating capital stock–flow dynamics, cross-capital dynamics and the role of institutional conditions in shaping potential adaptation pathways. The framework shows how resource-intensive and infrastructural measures designed to maintain tourism service continuity may conceal capital stock drawdown, shift vulnerability across actors and domains, and reinforce path dependency, thereby increasing maladaptation risk. By explicitly integrating natural, social, human and economic capital stocks and flows, the framework expands adaptation evaluation beyond short-term adaptive performance and economic-capital retention, making underlying resources and enabling conditions more visible within destination decision-making. Overall, the article argues that climate change adaptation in ATDs should be treated as a governance task of managing resource reconfiguration within biophysical and social constraints, thereby supporting more transparent deliberation on trade-offs, distributional implications and lock-in risks to safeguard long-term destination viability and tourism attractiveness.