A Questionnaire-based examination of the validity of the tourism climate index for application in South Africa

Abstract

Tourism Climate Indices have been developed over the past four decades to quantify and classify the climatic suitability of a given destination. However, their development and testing has primarily been conducted in the Global North. The Tourism Climate Index (TCI) was developed based on subjective judgement of scientists, the Holiday Climate Index (HCIurban and beach) on the preferences of tourists in Europe, and the Camping Climate Index (CCI) on camping occupancy in the USA. To ascertain whether a particular index is suitable for application in more distal regions it is crucial to test the local validity of the index. The TCI has previously been applied in 10 tourist locations across South Africa, and the validity tested against TripAdvisor reviews. In this study, the suitability of applicable tourism climate indices are tested against 870 survey questionnaires completed by tourists across the same cities. The questionnaire responses reveal that the importance of each climatic variable differs between cities, and for local versus international tourists. The results also demonstrate that thresholds of unacceptable temperature, likewise, vary by city and tourist’s country of origin. However, given the broad alignment with the weightings of the aforementioned tourism climate indices, rather than adjusting the individual indices based on these results, we argue for a more careful interpretation of the output scores and how they relate to the varied experiences of tourists within a location.