The relationship between climate and seasonality of business in coastal tourist destinations

At first glance, the relationship between climate and tourism seems to have clear correlations. However, a detailed examination reveals many counter-intuitive notions. It is known that climate is one of key tourist resources. Many destinations, especially those oriented towards coastal tourism, base their core appeal on climatic resources. Climate, as a natural resource, is an outstanding attractiveness component, especially in coastal tourism destinations, whose business operations are based on favourable climate conditions. Paradoxically, this driver of tourism activities is also a limiting factor for tourism development. In fact, climate is seen as the main cause of tourism seasonality. Favourable weather makes destinations popular in one part of the year, and forgotten otherwise. The seasonal concentration of tourist demands implies a number of negative effects on the tourist destination. The concentration of tourism activities over a short period of time each year - in the summer season, with noticeable discrepancies in the utilization of capacities between summer and winter - implies economic, environmental and socio-cultural unsustainability. This contradiction requires detailed analysis and that is the objective of this paper.