Summer weather conditions and tourism flows in urban and rural destinations

Abstract

This article presents new estimates of the impact of weather conditions on overnight stays of domestic and German tourists within Austria. The data consists of panel data for nine provinces for the summer seasons 1974–2012 where the variables are measured as year to year growt rates. Results using the seemingly unrelated regression model show that sunshine hours and temperatures in a given month have a significant and positive impact on domestic overnight stays in the same month for most of the provinces except for the capital of Vienna. Furthermore, sunshine hours affect German overnight stays mainly with a 1 year lag. In general, weather effects are much larger in August and September than in June and insignificant in July. An increase in temperature by 1 °C leads to an increase in domestic overnight stays in August by 1.2 %. The weather effects are largest for the province of Salzburg where current and lagged temperatures or sunshine can explain between 23 and 47 % of the variation in domestic and German overnight stays over the sample period.