Quantifying climate suitability for tourism in Réunion Island

Abstract

Globally, tourism is dependent on climate. Small islands are the most vulnerable tourism destinations to climate change threats. One such tourism destination is Réunion Island, a French Department located in the southwest Indian Ocean. Tourism climate indices have been used since the 1980s to quantify, classify and compare the climatic suitability of tourism destinations. Most, if not all, have been used in isolation with one specific index being used to quantify a destination's climate in what increasingly appears to be a checkbox exercise. This study does not seek to do this. It looks beyond simple quantification and is one of the first studies to critically assess the use of multiple indices in the southern hemisphere. Réunion Island is particularly well suited for this assessment given its diverse forms of tourism, topography and microclimates. This study presents the first analysis of climatic suitability for tourism for the island over a 33-year time period. Adopting a model inter-comparison approach, the results from the Tourism Climate Index (TCI), Holiday Climate Index for urban tourism (HCIUrban), Holiday Climate Index for beach tourism (HCIBeach) and the Camping Climate Index (CCI) will be presented. Before use, an applicability, suitability and validity assessment is applied, finding all four indices to be appropriate for this context. Data from 11 meteorological weather stations in Réunion for the period ranging between 1991-2023 were used to calculate each index for the available requisite data. Mean annual climatic suitability scores for the TCI range from 50-75.6 classified as ‘acceptable’ to ‘very good’ across all available stations. HCIUrban mean annual scores range between 56.9-61.6 classified as ‘acceptable’ to ‘good’ while HCIBeach scores range between 69.3-75.4 classified as ‘good’ to ‘very good’. Mean annual scores for the CCI are less favourable ranging between 3.6-5.8 classified as ‘unfavourable’ to ‘acceptable’. Results also show that Réunion offers winter peak seasonality for the TCI and HCI while the CCI shows a bimodal seasonality distribution. Change in climatic suitability over time sees TCI and HCIUrban scores experiencing a greater change in suitability than the HCIBeach and the CCI. A multi index approach reveals differences in seasonal and overall climatic suitability for the island across the tourism types available. This approach is beneficial in describing the climatic suitability for tourism more accurately, identifying the nuances in suitability for different tourism types and is therefore a valuable approach to use in future studies.