Abstract
Tourism is a major socioeconomic contributor to established and emerging destinations in the Mediterranean region. Recent studies introducing the Holiday Climate Index (HCI) highlight the significance of climate as a factor in sustaining the competitiveness of coastal and urban destinations. The aim of this study is to assess the future HCI performance of urban and beach destinations in the greater Mediterranean region. For this purpose, HCI scores for the reference (1971–2000) and future (2021–2050, 2070–2099) periods were computed with the use of two latest greenhouse gas concentration trajectories, RCP 4.5 and 8.5, based on the Middle East North Africa (MENA) Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) domain and data. The outputs were adjusted to a 500 m resolution via the use of lapse rate corrections that extrapolate the climate model topography against a resampled digital elevation model. All periodic results were seasonally aggregated and visualized on a (web) geographical information system (GIS). The web version of the GIS also allowed for a basic climate service where any user can search her/his place of interest overlaid with index ratings. Exposure levels are revealed at the macro scale while sensitivity is discussed through a validation of the climatic outputs against visitation data for one of Mediterranean’s leading destinations, Antalya.
Highlights
Tourism is one of the largest economic sectors worldwide with 10.4% share in global GDP, supporting one in every ten jobs on the planet [1]
Beach tourism has provided the major offer in positioning such growth, urban tourism is an increasingly important element for the region
The data and methodology employed in this study are grouped under five areas: retrieval of dynamically downscaled climate data, temperature adjustments based on environmental lapse rates, geographical information system (GIS)-based computations of Holiday Climate Index (HCI) ratings and their visualizations at the greater Mediterranean extent with a closeup to Antalya, a Web GIS-based preparation of a basic climate service to interactively share the entire results set with third parties, and validation and calibration of HCI:Beach through the case of Antalya
Summary
Tourism is one of the largest economic sectors worldwide with 10.4% share in global GDP, supporting one in every ten jobs on the planet [1]. In 2018, international tourist arrivals grew 5%. Europe was the world’s most visited region with 710 million international tourist arrivals (51% market share) and with international tourism receipts reaching. Europe’s leading position in tourism with a growth higher than Western, Central Eastern, and Northern. The region, with a total 46,000 km coastline shared by 22 countries, welcomed more than million international tourists in 2016, which is more than double the number recorded in 1995 [3]. Beach tourism has provided the major offer in positioning such growth, urban tourism is an increasingly important element for the region. The popularity of the Mediterranean for tourism is mostly due to its favorable climatic conditions, especially during summer [4,5,6]
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