Analysing Climatic Characteristics for the Suitability of Some Tourism Types in the case of Erzurum City Centre (original) (raw)

According to United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), tourism offers all over the world cultural, environmental and social (peace and security) benefits, as well as provides employment (creating jobs), economic growth and development. Tourism accounted for 1/10 of jobs created in the world, 10% of the World's GDP (1.6 trillion by 2030 1.8 US Dollars), 7% of all exports, and 30% of all service exports in the world in 2017. Tourism grows the fastest with oil, food and automotive industries all over the world by increasing the number of destinations and income sources of most developing countries and supporting several sectors from construction to agriculture or telecommunications. In such a vitally important sector, competition among destinations is inevitable and its economic contribution is related to the service quality and the high revenues. In such a high competition, every type of potential or resource is given to the benefit of the tourism sector and used in promotional materials even, marketing and branding efforts e.g. quality of the snow cover or sun and beaches. Climate characteristics are vitally important for tourism to ensure both loyalty and branding and incomes. For nearly 50 years several climate indices on tourism have been developed to show the advantages of climatic characteristics at a given tourist destination. This study aims to analyse the climate of Erzurum city, a winter destination, through Climate and Tourism Information Schemes (CTIS) based mainly on bioclimatic comfort conditions as well as effective climatic parameters on tourism differently from other indices. Results show that even though bioclimatic comfort values address extreme cold stress in the winter tourism season, the area is suitable for winter tourism when considering other climatic parameters. It can be stated as a conclusion that a unique tourism climate index to Turkey should be developed by taking into account the prevalent tourism types mainly winter and 3-S tourism. The tourism sector has been the fastest-growing one over the last 30 to 40 years and contributing larger to the socioeconomic development of nations compared to other outstanding sectors. With such a big capacity tourism may constitute the main revenue source for several developing countries. An increase in the present and prospected number of tourists and the amount of tourism revenue has caused a boom in also the number and variety of candidate destinations and keen rivalry between them. Service quality and accordingly the tourism income deeply affect the tourism's contributions to national economies. According to UNWTO (2019a), the sector accounted for 7% of total global exports, 30% of service exports and 10% of world GDP and one-tenth of the employment in the world in 2018. Visitor numbers all over the world rose by 5% in 2018 to 1.451 billion and the sector produced a revenue reaching USD 1.7 trillion (UNWTO, 2019b). Climatic characteristics are known to have affected and shaped all human activities and behaviours together with physical properties throughout human history. Well, known examples of the climatic impact on humans are on public health, urbanisation, economic activities like agriculture depending especially on outdoor and atmospheric activities. Therefore, humans have survived their lives, not in conflict but convenience with climatic conditions since their first existence on the earth by developing adaptation to the atmospheric environment until the Industrial Revolution nearly 200 years before.