Tourism vulnerability in sites of the Huasteca region San Luis Potosí, México, as result of climate variability

Abstract

In recent years, climate variability has affected the performance of many economic sectors, including tourism. This condition is fundamental for Mexico, a country that bases a significant part of its income on the value-added chains motivated by the visit to natural tourist areas where an increasing number of threats associated with climate variability occur. Such is the case of the Huasteca Potosina, a region where the increase in temperature modifies the regularity of hydrometeorological phenomena and its potential impacts are unknown.

The work consists of three sections; first, the fundamentals of climate variability and its relationship with nature tourism are discussed, then a climate baseline is obtained to determine the anomalies that occurred from 1990 to 2014, indicators are selected to determine the degree of exposure, sensitivity and resilience, and a climate vulnerability index is obtained for the 27 selected tourist attractions; finally, the future implications of the activity are projected. It is concluded that in the coming years there will be extreme climatic conditions that can be observed in the increase of temperature, the reduction of the landscape aesthetics of the sites, the comfort of the visitors, as well as the contraction of the sector.