Rating Tourists' Interest in Tourism-Tailored Climate and Environmental Products

Abstract

The scientific literature comprises a relatively large palette of studies focusing on tourist preferences regarding the weather and climate at the destination. However, the findings do not allow for establishing a hierarchy of climate and environmental features of interest for tourism based on destination type (urban/rural/mountain/seaside), but mainly to list them. We aim to identify some characteristics of a potential climate service targeting tourists by addressing in particular three aspects: 1. which are the weather, climate and/or environmental features most commonly marked as of interest in the general case of 'any destination type' and for the particular case of rural destinations; 2. which are the delivery and presentation forms of greatest interest; 3. how willing would be the tourists to pay for such a service. To this end, we used a questionnaire with five closed questions regarding these aspects, disseminated in Romania and Italy. The results confirm some expectations based on scientific literature and highlight the user interest in information encompassing several climates and/or environmental aspects, preferably in one single product. The results may be valuable for developing and providing effective tourism-oriented climate and environmental products and contribute to a better user uptake of such products and services.

Thermal stress information as a tourism-oriented climate product: Performance analysis for selected urban destinations in Romania and Italy

“…Regarding the free/paid access to the climate service content, available studies (e.g., Refs. [ 12 , 31 ]) suggest that only a limited pool of users would pay for this type of information, but this issue may be dealt with by adding more specific products, by extending the users pool (e.g., information customized not only for tourists but also for tourists investors and decision-makers etc.).…”

“…Applying these conditions to thermal stress seen as a potential tourism-oriented climate product, the population interest for this information [ 12 ] assures that it may be considered a good choice to be included in a climate service oriented towards tourists. To insure its uptake, the thermal-stress product should be associated with a high scientific quality as a fundamental requirement to build the user trust.…”

“…The forecasted information on thermal stress is useful for population and implicitly for tourists, for the latter pertaining to the planned or on-going activities during the vacation. However, climatic information on thermal stress, of interest for planning ahead the vacation, is not easily available for tourists, despite their interest for information at this time scale [ 12 ]. In some degree, this is valid for other types of climate information as well, which might be of interest and of help for tourists if customized to answer their needs.…”

“…The climate products provided through the prototype service are built using climate reanalysis, satellite-based products, analysis and forecast information. The selection of the information type is based on literature findings and it has been updated taking into account the tourists preferences identified through a survey [ 12 ]. The latter showed that thermal stress is the climate feature of most interest for the respondents independent of the destination type and consequently it has been introduced in the prototype service, along with other 3 biometeorological climate information.…”