Abstract
Climatology has increasingly become an important discipline for understanding tourism and recreation, especially in the era of contemporary climate change. Climate indices, in this respect, have been useful tools to yield the climatic attractiveness of tourism destinations as well as in understanding their altering suitability to various tourism types along with the changing climates. In this study, a major gap for a comprehensive climate index tailored for ski tourism is aimed to be fulfilled. For this purpose, initially the Ski Climate Index (SCI) is specified, based on fuzzy logic and as informed by literature and through extensive co-creation with the ski tourism industry experts, and applied to an emerging destination, Turkey, based on regional climate modeling projections. The index is designed as a combination of snow reliability and aesthetics and comfort facets, the latter of which includes sunshine, wind, and thermal comfort conditions. Results show that the Eastern Anatolia region is climatically the most suitable area for future development, taking account of the overriding effects of natural and technical snow reliability. Future research suggestions include the incorporation of more components into the index as well as technical recommendations to improve its application and validation.
Highlights
Climatology has increasingly become an important discipline for understanding tourism and recreation, especially in the era of contemporary climate change
Tourism has been a subject of these indices since Mieczkowski (1985) introduced the Tourism Climatic Index (TCI), which yields the climatic potential of tourism destinations based on total scores derived from summations where the climatic components have their own weighted contributions based on individual rating scales
This study aimed at establishing an expert informed climate index tailored for ski tourism and its initial application on an emerging destination, Turkey, based on historical and future projections
Summary
Climatology has increasingly become an important discipline for understanding tourism and recreation (de Freitas 2003; Martínez-Ibarra and Gómez-Martín 2013), especially in the era of contemporary climate change (de Freitas 2017; Fang et al 2018). Climate indices (e.g., Mieczkowski 1985; de Freitas et al 2008; Scott et al 2016), in this respect, have been useful tools to yield the climatic attractiveness of tourism destinations as well as in understanding their altering suitability to various tourism types along with the changing climates. Tourism has been a subject of these indices since Mieczkowski (1985) introduced the Tourism Climatic Index (TCI), which yields the climatic potential of tourism destinations based on total scores derived from summations where the climatic components have their own weighted contributions based on individual rating scales
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