Spatiotemporal Variation of Tourism Climate Index for Türkiye during 1981–2020

Abstract

Tourism activities are highly dependent on climatological conditions. The climatological suitability of tourism destinations is investigated by using a Tourism Climate Index (TCI) that is frequently used by researchers. The TCI varies between 0 and 100 and is created by using temperature, relative humidity, sunshine duration, wind and precipitation data. For TCI, 100 is for ideal and 0 is for extremely unfavorable conditions for tourism. In this study, the meteorological data covering the period of 1981–2020 for 98 stations is used to calculate the TCI of each station for all seasons and months. The Mann-Kendall trend test is used for TCI behavior of the entire country and Sen Innovative Trend Analysis method is used for four famous tourism destinations. For summer, coastal regions have smaller TCI values than inland regions due to the high amount of relative humidity. Most stations have TCI values in the “Very Good” category or better. In spring and autumn, the TCI values fall into the “Acceptable” category or better. The winter is the season with smallest TCI values. For summer, 54 of 98 stations have a decreasing trend at different levels of significance and four of them have an increasing trend. In autumn, 30 stations have an increasing trend and two stations have a decreasing trend at standard levels of significance. Similarly, for spring, 20 stations have an increasing trend and one has a decreasing trend. During winter, 14 stations have an increasing trend while one has decreasing trend. The Sen Innovative Trend test shows an increasing trend on average for four famous tourism destinations during May–September months.