CLIMATE PREFERENCES FOR TOURISM: AN EXPLORATORY TRI-NATION COMPARISON

ABSTRACT This study examines tourist perceptions of optimal climatic conditions for tourism and the relative importance of four climatic parameters (air temperature, precipitation, sunshine, wind) in three major tourism environments (beach-coastal, urban, mountains). A survey instrument was administered to 831 university students representative of the young-adult travel segment, in three countries (Canada, New Zealand, Sweden). Three salient findings included: the perceived optimum climatic conditions varied significantly among the three major tourism environments, the relative importance of the four climatic parameters was not the same in the three tourism environments, and the climatic preferences of respondents from the three nations were found to be consistent in some ways but varied significantly in others. The findings have a number of important implications for the literature on climate and tourism, including the development of climate indices for tourism, the definition of single optimal climate for global tourism, and climate change impact assessments. We believe that with a broader cross-cultural sample of tourist segments, this approach holds much promise for revealing the detailed complexities of tourist preferences for climate