CHANGES AND TRENDS IN IDEAL HOLIDAY PERIOD BASED ON HOLIDAY CLIMATE INDEX APPLIED TO THE CARPATHIAN BASIN

The Holiday Climate Index (HCI) is a well-known and valued index for assessing the weather suitability of outdoor recreational activities. As a composite index, it takes into account many aspects of the weather, all of which affect the well-being of tourists. With the accentuation of climate change, the HCI plays an important role in the organization and planning of tourist activities. These plans must take into account not only the individual values of the index for different destinations, but also the sequence of days with certain expected values of the index. The aim of our research was to create a software module in R that would allow the analysis and identification of periods of consecutive days in which the HCI is above a certain minimum threshold and also has a minimum average value for that period. We applied this module to the analysis of historical (1970-2004) and present and near-future (2005-2040) HCI values in the EC-EARTH climate model, identifying for each year and location in the Carpathian Basin the starting day of the climatically best seven-day period. To obtain a time series for each location, we aggregated the values for the two periods using the mean, median, standard deviation and trend calculation. The analysis shows that the ideal time to start a holiday is not only changing, it is becoming increasingly unpredictable. Whereas in the 1970-2004 period there was a well -observed decreasing trend in the starting day, for the 2005-2040 period we see a trend-free situation in most of the area. Even where trends do appear, we find them in opposite directions in nearby areas, making it difficult to plan the ideal time to start a holiday.