The climate tourism potential of Alpine destinations using the example of Sonnblick, Rauris and Salzburg

The climate tourism potential of a region can be described by methods used in human biometeorology and applied climatology. Frequency analyses based on complex thermal bioclimatic indices (e.g. physiologically equivalent temperature) and diagrams of precipitation patterns based on thresholds offer new approaches of visualisation. An integral approach for tourism climatologic analyses is provided by the climate–tourism/transfer–information–scheme that also bases on frequency distributions of relevant factors and parameters which are important for a destination. The knowledge about the vertical variability of tourism climatologic factors is of high importance because of the several kinds of tourism activities affected by weather. The same holds for a quantification of extreme events like heat waves because of their possible effects on health and recreation over a year's course. The results show that the vertical gradient of bioclimatic and tourism-related parameters can be of value when developing strategies of adaption to climate change.