Tourist Weather Perception and its Consideration in Bioclimate Assessment Methods

Weather and climate are important natural resources for tourism and recreation, although sometimes they can make outdoor leisure activities less satisfying or even impossible. Upon steadily increasing number of tourists, development of appropriate tools and assessment schemes to evaluate bioclimate for tourism purpose has become an important issue. Until now, a number of indices based on particular meteorological element valuation for tourism, such as Tourism-Climate-Index (TCI), as well as common biometeorological indices derived from human heat budget models have been used for this purpose. For long-term climate analysis, biometeorological weather classifications or diagrams summarizing the frequencies of particular weather limitations and opportunities (Climate-Tourism-Information-Scheme - CTIS) were applied. Many of previous researches were focused on weather-dependent types of tourism, e.g. Sea, Sand & Sun (3S) tourism, where relationships between biometeorological conditions and tourist satisfaction or well-being were more evident and easier to predict. In one work (de Freitas et al. 2008) an interesting concept of climate index for 3S tourism, calibrated and verified in weather perception studies, was developed. However, evaluation methods of bioclimatic conditions especially for general tourism activities, i.e. sightseeing, still need to be improved because most of them, while using popular biometeorological indices, hinge on the assumption that the most favourable conditions for tourism are those which do not arouse heat load in humans.

The aim of this work was to determine seasonal and regional variability of tourist weather perception in urban environment, as well as to determine whether thermal sensation scales of commonly used indices reflect estimation of tourist actual biometeorological condition and personal expectations towards weather elements. To investigate how human thermal sensations vary upon meteorological conditions typical for temperate climate, weather perception field researches were conducted in Warsaw (Poland) in all seasons. Both tourists and locals (women and men of different ages) were included in the survey. We identified specific features of tourist preferences towards weather elements and found out, that thermal conditions considered to be optimal for sightseeing, frequently differed from thermoneutral conditions. The results confirmed existence of phenomena called alliesthesia, observed earlier by Spagnolo & de Dear (2003). Next, we analysed the possible influence of non-meteorological factors on weather perception. Great impact of clothing insulation on creating thermal sensations was observed. To investigate regional differentiation of bioclimate perception among tourists, we also carried out field researches both in Madrid (Spain) and Warsaw (Poland), under comparable biothermal conditions during hot summer days. The results suggest that in different regions of the world, tourist thermal sensations were affected not only by physiological processes, but they were also conditioned by psychological factors. Finally, we referred our data to commonly used methods of bioclimate assessment for tourism and recreation. The obtained data suggests that development of a single universal climate index for tourism would be difficult, as it would require its calibration each time to a given climate zone, season and type of tourism. We propose that one of these problems can be overcome by taking into account the changing human perception throughout the year and using shifting thermal sensation scales.