Weather and climate serve as an important travel motivator, influencing destination choice, the timing of travel, travel expenditures and overall trip satisfaction.
Climatic resources are a defining factor in destination attractiveness and are a key element of the natural resource base of a destination that can be classified along a spectrum from ideal to unacceptable.
A growing literature has sought to measure, evaluate and assess climate resources for tourism, both generally and for specific tourism market segments.
A direct impact of climate change on tourism will be the global redistribution of climatic resources.
This would change the length and quality of climate-sensitive tourism seasons, affecting both the temporal and spatial distribution of domestic and international tourism flows and spending.
Studies have revealed a generally consistent temporal and geographical pattern of climate change impacts on global tourism. As the 21st century progresses, there is anticipated to be a pronounced shift in thermal comfort (and thereby tourism demand) towards higher latitudes and away from subtropical and tropical destinations.
This would have a substantial impact on the tourism-intensive economy of the Caribbean, as the vast majority of the region’s attractions are based on weather- and climate-dependent 3S (sun, sea, sand) tourism.
However, the assertion that major coastal tourism destinations, such as the Caribbean, will become seasonally “too hot” for tourism has been questioned because the literature has not established what tourists to these regions perceive to be thermally unacceptable for coastal tourism activities.
In addition, existing climate and tourism assessments do not account for the microclimatic conditions where tourism activities take place. With the inextricable dependency between 3S tourism and favourable weather conditions in the coastal zone, it is important to understand both how tourists perceive and evaluate climatic resources, particularly those conditions that are most preferred or avoided (that is, trigger behavioural responses), as well as examine the adaptive climatic range tourists’ can experience within a coastal setting. Such information is a prerequisite if accurate projections are to be made about changes in tourism demand as a result of climate variability or future climate change.
Climate change and its direct and indirect impacts on global tourism is a pressing issue Profound impacts are anticipated for the industry throughout the 21st century.
With the rapid increase in multidisciplinary tourism and climate change literature, it can be a challenge to decipher the accuracy of assertions about the vulnerability of tourism.
Studies often make assumptions about tourist perceptions of climate-resources, as well as climate change implications for changes in tourism demand for highly generalized tourism populations and market regions. Like other areas of climate change research, tourism has seen its share of early speculation and contrasting perspectives, which demand careful, information-based consideration.
With the inextricable dependency between 3S tourism and favourable weather conditions in the coastal zone, there remains an important need to improve current climate change assessments by basing them on both climate data that represents the localized conditions where such tourism activities take place, as well as providing considerations for thermo-physiological comfort.
Such information is a prerequisite if projections are to be made about destinations becoming thermally unsuitable for tourism. As our understanding of climate thresholds that trigger behavioural changes among tourists improve, this knowledge can be applied to more accurately project changes in tourism demand under climate change.
• Dr Michelle Rutty is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
