Understanding weather's impact on urban tourist satisfaction: an online review analysis

Weather is a critical factor in tourism, yet most climate–tourism research uses top-down approaches that do not fully capture how weather impacts tourists’ situated experiences. By analysing online reviews of urban attractions, this paper shows that, while weather is rarely a strong standalone determinant of tourist satisfaction, it exerts influence through interactions with other attraction attributes: modulating the visual appeal of scenery, interacting with infrastructure to protect or compromise physical comfort and limiting activities by imposing operational constraints in severe conditions. This study also uncovers counterintuitive pathways often ignored in conventional climate assessments, such as the aesthetic appeal of severe weather. Weather is thus not merely a physiological stressor, and these findings contribute nuance to theories of tourism climatology and a better understanding of the impacts of weather.