Assessing Present and Future Climate Conditions for Beach Tourism in Jardines del Rey (Cuba)

María Belén Gómez-Martín,Reynier Bada-Díaz,Felipe Matos-Pupo,Daynier Escalante-Pérez

doi:10.3390/atmos11121295

Abstract

This study assesses, adapting the weather types method, the suitability of the climate in Jardines del Rey (Cuba) for the practice of sun and beach tourism over the period 1991–2014, and the potential future impacts of climate change on this form of tourism on the basis of outputs from the PRECIS-Caribbean Regional Climate Model for the period 2021–2050. The methodology applied makes a classification of daily situations according to the most frequent combinations of climatological variables in tropical areas while focusing on a very specific segment of the tourism market (sun and beach tourism) and taking into account the behaviour of beach users and bioclimatic criteria. The results indicate that the distribution of weather types at the destination during the period 1991–2014 was highly consistent with the monthly distribution of tourists in Cuba, highlighting the existence of a low season from May to October and a high season between November and April. The future scenarios project an improvement in climate conditions for the practice of sun and beach tourism. This improvement is not based on a spectacular increase in favourable weather types compared to unfavourable ones, but rather on a better distribution of both.

Highlights

Coastal tourism is widely considered the most important segment in the tourism industry worldwide and “sun and beach” tourism is its most important variant [1,2,3]
In line with the above, this study presents the distribution of the climate conditions for tourism at the Jardines del Rey Cuban tourist region for the base period and for a future period based on outputs from the PRECIS-Caribbean Regional Climate Model for SRES A2 and B2 [9,78,79,80,81]
We show the results for the base period 1991–2014 of the application of the tropical weather types classification for sun and beach tourism

Summary

Introduction

Coastal tourism is widely considered the most important segment in the tourism industry worldwide and “sun and beach” tourism is its most important variant [1,2,3]. One example is the Caribbean, in which the increasing importance of this sector is manifested in figures provided by the UNWTO: 25.7 million international tourists visited the Caribbean subregion in 2018, generating an income of USD 32 billion. These highly significant figures translate into market shares within the Americas region of 11.9% and 9.6%, respectively [6].

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Conclusion