Kganane Carmen K, Fitchett Jennifer M
School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Int J Biometeorol. 2025 Jun 23. doi: 10.1007/s00484-025-02965-w.
Tourism Climate Indices have been developed over the past four decades to quantify and classify the climatic suitability of a given destination. However, their development and testing has primarily been conducted in the Global North. The Tourism Climate Index (TCI) was developed based on subjective judgement of scientists, the Holiday Climate Index (HCI) on the preferences of tourists in Europe, and the Camping Climate Index (CCI) on camping occupancy in the USA. To ascertain whether a particular index is suitable for application in more distal regions it is crucial to test the local validity of the index. The TCI has previously been applied in 10 tourist locations across South Africa, and the validity tested against TripAdvisor reviews. In this study, the suitability of applicable tourism climate indices are tested against 870 survey questionnaires completed by tourists across the same cities. The questionnaire responses reveal that the importance of each climatic variable differs between cities, and for local versus international tourists. The results also demonstrate that thresholds of unacceptable temperature, likewise, vary by city and tourist's country of origin. However, given the broad alignment with the weightings of the aforementioned tourism climate indices, rather than adjusting the individual indices based on these results, we argue for a more careful interpretation of the output scores and how they relate to the varied experiences of tourists within a location.
在过去的四十年里，人们开发了旅游气候指数来量化和分类特定目的地的气候适宜性。然而，它们的开发和测试主要是在北半球进行的。旅游气候指数（TCI）是基于科学家的主观判断开发的，假日气候指数（HCI）是基于欧洲游客的偏好开发的，露营气候指数（CCI）是基于美国露营入住率开发的。为了确定某个特定指数是否适用于更偏远的地区，测试该指数在当地的有效性至关重要。TCI此前已应用于南非的10个旅游地点，并根据猫途鹰（TripAdvisor）的评论对其有效性进行了测试。在本研究中，针对同一城市的游客填写的870份调查问卷，测试了适用的旅游气候指数的适用性。问卷回复显示，每个气候变量的重要性在不同城市之间以及本地游客和国际游客之间存在差异。结果还表明，不可接受温度的阈值同样因城市和游客的原籍国而异。然而，鉴于与上述旅游气候指数的权重基本一致，我们主张更谨慎地解释输出分数以及它们与某个地点内游客不同体验的关系，而不是根据这些结果调整各个指数。
