Impact of weather conditions on tourism demand in the peak summer season over the last 50 years

•Modeling the impact of weather on overnight stays over the last 50 years.•Sunshine hours and temperatures have a significant and positive impact.•Impact on foreign overnight stays occurs only with a one-year lag.•Larger effects for visitors from neighbouring countries.•Long-run impact of climate change on tourism demand is quite modest.

This paper employs static and dynamic tourism-demand models to investigate the impact of weather on domestic and foreign overnight stays in Austria in the peak summer season for the period 1960–2012. The results of first-difference regression models show that average sunshine duration and temperatures in the peak summer season had a significant and positive impact on domestic overnight stays in the same season, whereas average precipitation had a significantly negative effect. For foreign overnight stays, we find that the positive impact of temperatures and sunshine duration occurs only after a 1-year lag, with larger effects for visitors from neighboring countries. In general, there is a non-linear relationship between temperatures and tourism demand in the form of an inverted u-shaped curve. Furthermore, error-correction models show a significant long-run relationship between both foreign and domestic overnight stays and sunshine duration, with an increased impact over time. While tourism demand can respond quite significantly to short-run (annual) weather variations, the long-run impact of climate change (e.g., an increase in sunshine duration) over the past 50 years has been quite modest.