GLOBAL WARMING AND ITS EFFECT ON TOURISM DEVELOPMENT ON WHOLE ISLANDS OF TURKEY REPUBLIC

Global Warming and its effect on tourism development on whole islands of Turkey Republic



Abstract

The literature on tourism and climate change lacks an analysis of the global changes in tourism demand. Here, a simulation model of tourism in Turkey is presented that fills that gap. The current pattern of international tourist flows is modelled using 1995 data on departures and arrivals for 207 countries. Using this basic model the impact on arrivals and departures through changes in population, per capita income and climate change are analysed. In the medium to long term, tourism will grow, however, the change from climate change is smaller than from population and income changes.

Global Warming and its effect on tourism development on whole islands of Turkey Republic

1. Introduction

Tourism is one of the largest and fastest growing economic sectors. Tourism is obviously related to climate. It is therefore surprising that the tourism literature pays little attention to climate and climatic change (e.g., Witt and Witt, 1995). It is equally surprising that the climate change impact literature pays little attention to tourism (Smith et al., 2001).

The situation is now slowly changing. Three branches of literature have started to grow. Firstly, there are a few studies (e.g., Maddison, 2001) that build statistical models of the behaviour of certain groups of tourists as a function of weather and climate. Secondly, there are a few studies (e.g., Abegg, 1996) that relate the fates of particular tourist destinations to climate. Thirdly, there are studies (e.g., Matzarakis, 2002) that try to define indicators of the attractiveness to tourists of certain weather conditions. These three strands in the literature share a common deficit, namely the lack of a larger, global assessment of push and pull factors of tourism in Turkey. This study is an attempt to fill that gap.

If one wants to estimate the implications of climate change for a particular tourist destination, then one would not only want to know how the attractiveness of that place is changing—as is done in the second strand of literature defined above. Rather, one would need to know how climate change affects the attractiveness of that place relative to its competitors. If, for instance, Switzerland loses half of its snow, but other European skiing destinations lose all—then Switzerland's position may well be strengthened as the only place in Europe with natural snow. Similarly, one would need the change in behaviour of all tourists, and not just of those from Germany, the Netherlands and the UK—as the first strand of literature does. This paper combines the first and second strands of literature to overcome these drawbacks. Like the third strand of literature, it uses attractiveness indicators, albeit ones that are based on observed behaviour. In combining these three elements, we obviously had to simplify. The novelty of this paper lies in the interactions of push and pull factors at a global scale, not in the details.

Section 2 reviews the literature on tourism, climate, and climate ...