After being perceived negatively by the inhabitants of mountain areas, glaciers have been promoted as a tourist attraction for over two centuries. The first visits to the Arveyron Arch (Chamonix) in the 18th century were followed by cog railways and cable cars that allow access to the largest glaciers in the Alps and in the world in just a few dozen minutes. Thus, glacier tourism today includes practices and touristic sites that are emblematic of certain mountain territories. However, rising temperatures and the extremely rapid glacier retreat also make these glacier sites markers of climate change. The Mer de Glace in France, the Rhone glacier in Switzerland and the Pasterze glacier in Austria are among the major glacier tourist sites that are experiencing the full force of landscape changes linked to the retreat of the cryosphere. What do these changes imply for the operators of these glacier tourism sites? And for their visitors? Using mixed methodologies, this PhD thesis attempts to answer these two questions for six major Alpine glacier tourism sites. In essence, the results show that glacial tourism sites are largely impacted by climate change and the glaciological and geomorphological changes it brings to mountain territories. These impacts lead to difficulties in site management, itinerary issues, difficulties in carrying out certain activities which may become more dangerous, or a decrease in the attractiveness of the sites through less attractive glacial activities or through a "landscape degradation" feared by the site managers. However, our results with visitors to the sites show that this "degradation" of the landscape does not drastically reduce visitors' satisfaction with the glacial landscape: the negative judgements are limited to glaciers or paraglacial forms, but only slightly affect visitors' general appreciation of the landscape. At the same time, a new form of tourism - last chance tourism - is developing around glaciers and shows that they are now considered as "endangered species". Furthermore, the site managers in question are implementing strategies for adapting to climate change that are mainly reactive and which raise the question of their long-term sustainability. This question is even more important as glacier modelling for the year 2050 suggests that current adaptations will not be sufficient.