Journal of Tourism & Hospitality
Open Access

Abstract

The Use of Weather Driven Demand Analysis in Recreation Site Management

Franz Prettenthaler, Kortschak D and Ortmann P

The demand for most recreation activities is weather dependent. In this paper we study this weather dependence for a high number of recreation sites across the Austrian Province of Styria. We divide the recreation sites into three categories: bathing, outdoor and indoor. For the three categories of facilities we can find different patterns of weather dependence which go along with findings in the existing literature. While demand for bathing sites increases with increasing temperature, the demand for outdoor sites increases up to a threshold temperature and decreases afterwards. Finally, we find that demand for indoor activities is negatively related to temperature. In addition to the illustration of the weather dependence, we use a simple warehouse model to demonstrate for three examples to what extend managers of recreation site could profit from the knowledge of weather dependence of the demand.