Jun 16, 2024 -
Tourism is a fast growing industry and is expected to become one of the largest industries at world level. The people travel to outward destinations for different purposes, namely leisure and recreation, religious performance, sight seeing etc. The influence of weather and climate on recreation and tourism are weather & climate dependent. For example, visit to religious places doesn't have weather component as people having strong believes in there respective religion visit the places of worship braving the hostile & inclement weather conditions. Similarly, visit to cultural centers is also not guided by climatic factors rather strong faith & desire motivate the people to venture to undertake journey to the places of cultural importance irrespective of weather conditions. An example of how weather controls tourism is
Badrinath Dham and Kedarnath Dham located at higher elevations (10350 feet and 11750 Teet respectively) in the Himalayas are closed during winter season because of frost condition and snowfall. The roads have been constructed along the steep valley sides of the Alaknanda (For Badrinath) and the Mandakini(for Kedarnath) rivers. There are frequent road blocks during July-August because of landslides caused by cloudbursts and incessant monsoon rainfall. It is apparent that extremely low temperatures during winter season and early summer season (mid-November to mid-April) completely stop religious tours to four sacred
'dhams" (religious places of worships) e.g. Badrinath, Kedarnath. Gangotri and Yamunotri located in the Uttaranchal Himalaya, while rainfall and consequent landslides lessen the number of devotees during rainy season. It is also important to note that en-route weather is also significant for all sorts of tourists.
It may be mentioned that recreation, leisure and tourism industry depends upon correct information of pleasant, reliable and appropriate weather conditions en-route and at the sites and correct picture of political situation, social harmony and terrorism free environment. So, there is greater demand by the tourists for weather information about the selected sites. There are numerous sources of weather information as follows: (1) Telephone weather information services (TWIS), 2) weather brochures, (3) specialized publications. (4) holiday weather books, (5) television weather information services etc. It may be pointed that the agencies involved in the tourism industry present their weather brochures in such a manner at positive sides of the weather conditions are highlighted but negative points are deliberately omitted. The agencies want to sell out destinations with attractive advertisement highlighting the attractive aspects of the site ignoring unfavourable aspects. Pigram and Hobbs (1975) while commenting on such behaviour of tourism agencies have remarked, a significant portion of the budget for the tourist industry appears to be allocated to the 'image-makers for creating the desirable' weather picture. Advertising for tourism and immigration, in much of Australia, for example, often stress sun, surf and sand, perhaps fostering the impression that these are nationwide, year-round attributes' (J.E. Hobbs, 1980) but this is not true as this claim may be true only for a part of the year but the tourists, as impressed by the advertisement, get the impression that sunshine (sun), beaches (sand) and surfing (surf) are available for recreation and sports throughout the year.
It may be concluded that weather and climate have profound influence on the recreation and tourism industry. The weather conditions determine comfort of participants of sports and games and spectators and comfort in turn determines attendance of tourists which in turn determines the economy of the tourism industry.
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