Climate potential and tourist demand in Catalonia (Spain) during the summer season

Abstract

This article shows how the study of climate-preference demand (through surveys, interviews, behavior observation, etc.) is a key factor in the development of a catalog of types of weather suitable for tourism, which can then be applied to present or future climatic scenarios with the goal of evaluating climate-tourism potential. The proposal utilizes the weather-types method of Besancenot, Mounier and de Lavenne, which incorporates 7 climate variables and comfort indexes relevant to general tourism activities, to assess the spatial and temporal distribution of climate resources for tourism in Catalonia (Spain). The results were compared with the tourist's reality in the area of study, by considering the number of visitors and the occupation rate of tourist lodging. The study of present climate suitabilities and of tourists' behavior discloses several uncertainties that should be examined; however, at the same time, these suggest several management strategies which, if adopted, could be immediately beneficial for the tourist sector. At present, in the Spanish and Catalan case, the opportunities offered by climate-tourist resources are not being fully utilized. The periods and places identified as climatically suitable for tourism are greater than the periods and spaces actually used by tourists. This is why the agents and operators in the market must act on the demand, in consideration of the geographic-tourist space, and on the supply to maximize use of the climate resource.KEY WORDS: Weather · Climate · Tourism potential · Demand · Climate change · Catalonia Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisherClim Res 32: [75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87] 2006 the question remain uncertain, but at the same time, it also offers some essential ideas for management strategies that would improve opportunities for the tourism sector both now and in a future climate-change scenario.

Rain, Rain, Go Away, Come Again Another Day. Weather Preferences of Summer Tourists in Mountain Environments

“…Stated preferences studies are used to derive perceived ideal, acceptable and unacceptable weather conditions and thresholds. Apart from general assessments [30], there are studies focusing on beach tourism (e.g., [10,29,[31][32][33]), urban tourism [10,29,34], mountain tourism [35,36] or camping tourism [37]. These studies show that tourists' weather preferences differ between tourism environments, such as beach, urban and mountain tourism.…”

Comparison of Climate Preferences for Domestic and International Beach Holidays: A Case Study of Canadian Travelers

“…Statistical models, including multiple linear regressions, have examined the effect of weather on visitation numbers at tourist attractions [50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59] and econometric models have estimated tourism-climate demand functions based on international tourism arrivals data at both a regional [60][61][62] and global scale [63,64]. Researchers have also observed tourists' in situ behavioral response to weather conditions (e.g., via webcams) [65][66][67] and have surveyed tourists directly about their preferred climatic conditions [25,29,38,42,[68][69][70][71][72][73][74].…”

Future climate resources for tourism in Europe based on the daily Tourism Climatic Index

“…A new generation of climate indices for tourism is now being developed that address this shortcoming by designing the index to integrate overriding effects ). An alternative is to classify weather according to a limited number of different "weather types" (Besancenot 1990;Gómez Martín 2006).…”