Forecasting hotel-industry performance

This paper provides a method which may be used by hospitality managers to forecast the annual hotel-industry occupancy rate for their respective localities. An empirical application of the method demonstrates that it can generate reasonably accurate forecasts of annual industry performance and can be useful to managers in their evaluation of the future competitive environment. An assessment of the influence of key variables upon forecast accuracy suggests that market research on trends in visitor characteristics would be useful for longer-term forecasting.     

Initially Testing an Improved Extrapolative Hotel Room Occupancy Rate Forecasting Technique

SUMMARY

The existing time series forecasting models either capture the informationof the last few data in the data series or the entire data series is used for projecting future values. In other words, the time series forecasting models are unable to take advantage of the last trend in the data series, which always have a direct influence on the estimated values. This paper proposes an improved extrapolative time series forecasting technique to compute future hotel occupancy rates. The performance of this new technique was tested with officially published room occupancy rates in Hong Kong. Forecasted room occupancy rates were compared with actual room occupancy rates in several accuracy performance dimensions. Empirical results indicate that the new technique is promising with reasonably good forecasting results.     

Tourists' perceptions of environmentally responsible innovations at tourism businesses

This paper investigates tourists' perceptions of environmentally responsible practices by tourism businesses by analyzing the attitudes of tourists toward “green” innovations in tourist places. It was hypothesized that tourists who were more strongly motivated by nature-oriented experiences would perceive environmentally responsible practices as more valuable than tourists less motivated by nature-oriented experiences. The study is based on a survey of individuals who visited the Arizona Welcome Center in northeastern Arizona and the Chamber of Commerce offices in Holbrook and Springerville, Arizona. As expected, visitors with a stronger nature orientation had more positive views of environmentally responsible practices by tourism businesses than tourists not nature-oriented. They felt such innovations are important and valuable.     

A management orientated approach to combination forecasting of tourism demand

Volatility, exponential smoothing, regression and Naïve 2 models are considered singly and in combination in terms of forecasting demand for international tourism. These models generate accurate predictions of tourism flows, but their prime utility is when combined with other models. Usually, models are combined by means of purely statistical criteria. We show that goal programming (GP) offers an alternative, flexible approach to model combination. GP offers planners a practical solution to tourism forecasting problems, since the method is more adaptable than conventional minimisation of prediction error, by permitting practitioners to prioritise a series of management related goals. Forecasters can focus on longer- and short-term goals, minimising forecast under- and over-estimation and/or concentrate on prediction errors in tourism flows at various times of the year.     

Forecasting international tourism trends to 2010

Modifications of earlier versions of forecasting models make it possible to trace the effects of changes in income and prices emanating from each individual country considered in this paper. At the theoretical level, it examines the assumptions underlying partial demand models and points out the implications of these assumptions in the context of those relating to international tourism. The new model is used to generate forecasts of tourism imports and exports for 20 countries for the period up to 2010. It allows a more realistic simulation of the impact of political events such as the introduction of the Euro and of changes in framework conditions.     

Forecasting tourism: a combined approach

In this article, we employ a combined seasonal nonseasonal ARIMA and sine wave nonlinear regression forecast model to predict international tourism arrivals, as represented by the number of world-wide visitors to Singapore. Compared with a similar study of the accuracy of international tourist arrivals forecasts by Chan (Journal of Travel Research, 1993, 31, 58–60)¹ and Chu (Journal of Travel Research, 1998, 36, 79–84)² using other univariate time series models, our proposed model has the smallest mean absolute percentage error.     

A tourism demand function for the Okanagan,BC

This study examines the relative importance of the existing determinants of tourism demand in the Okanagan. Because national coefficients cannot be used intercnageable with regional coefficients, it is hypothesized that the values of the Okanagan demand elasticities are likely to be lower than that of the Province and the nation. Five major markets for Okanagan tourism with identified and separate regressions run to determine the relative importance of the determinants of demand for Okanagan tourism with respect to these markets. Empirical results indicate that national coefficient will tend to overestimate the regional coefficient values. Contrary to the results of other studies for the nation as a whole, the exchange rate and travel cost did not seem to be significant determinants of Okanagan tourism receipts.     

The Delphi technique in the measurement of tourism market potential: The case of Nova Scotia

In order to plan for the development of tourism in Nova Scotia it has been necessary to gather information and opinions on the industry on a more detailed scale than has hitherto been done. Here the Delphi technique is used to gather data on tourism research, on future impacts of tourism and to strengthen a regional data base, all of which are intended to act as an effective policy-making tool in solving management and planning problems in the tourism and hospitality industry. The impact of new technology (in particular the CHECK-INN system) and training needs are discussed in detail.     

Econometric forecasts of tourism demand to 2005

A complete system of demand equations which was developed previously to generate forecasts of tourism imports and exports is modified to allow for destination-specific demand structures in the tourism export functions. The new model is shown to be considerably more realistic than the original one, and represents a major conceptual improvement. Furthermore, the modified complete system of demand equations yields more accurate outof-sample forecasts, across both varying time horizons and types of forecast. The new model is used to generate forecasts of tourism imports and exports for 18 countries and various major geographical areas, including the recently expanded European Union, for the period up to 2005 for different scenarios.     

Town walls,walled towns and tourism: paradoxes and paradigms

The paradoxical relationship between tourists and town walls is examined in the wider context of the walled town tourism. Such towns may be paradigm cases for historic towns as attractions for heritage, urban and cultural tourism among the ‘flows and scapes’ of delocated global tourism. Widely distributed across the ‘old’ world and extant even in the ‘new’, town walls can be seen as the grim barriers between contested identities or as the emblems of the peaceful security of the town within. The paper draws on material gathered as part of a European Interreg IIIc network project – ‘ARCHWAY’. Walled towns and related monuments represent nearly 20% of the 890-strong 2009 world heritage list and half the ‘ARCHWAY’ towns have world heritage status or aspirations. To meet the economic and urban planning challenges, walled towns have developed a range of options for success in, or for surviving, tourism. Examples from across Europe and beyond are critically appraised in the light of the literature of historic and heritage town tourism. As historic towns with obvious signs of past conflict, walled towns point the way to examining urban heritage tourism with de-romanticised vision.     

Dynamic relationship between tourism,economic growth,and environmental quality

Abstract

In the recent era of globalisation, the tourism sector is growing rapidly and stimulates economic growth across the world, however, the inevitable environmental consequences of tourism cannot be ignored. For sustainable tourism, it is necessary to understand the interrelationship between economic growth, tourism, and environmental quality. Hence, the objective of the current research is to investigate the dynamic relationship between tourism, economic growth, and CO₂ emissions from 1995 to 2014 in the context of BRICS economies. A group of econometric tests robust to heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence is applied to achieve accurate and unbiased results. Empirical findings propose that tourism sector significantly encourages economic growth; however, tourism degrades the quality of the environment. Also, globalisation has a long-term relationship with economic growth but an insignificant relationship with CO₂ emissions. The long-term elasticities further recommend that investment stimulate economic growth and mitigate CO₂ emissions. Moreover, environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) holds in BRICS countries in its significance to tourism and globalisation. Finally, a heterogeneous panel non-causality test detects bi-directional causality between tourism receipts and CO₂ emissions. Moreover, tourism and investment in tourism Granger cause each other. Empirical findings direct towards important policy implications.     

The evaluation of visitor experiences using the peak-end rule

ABSTRACT

As the peak-end rule suggests that the peak and the end moments are a better predictor of the overall evaluations of experiences than an average of the total experiences, the purpose of this study was to examine the role of the peak-end rule in predicting overall satisfaction with the visitors’ experiences. The data was collected from 187 visitors who participated in alleyway historical tour areas. The results of this study support for the peak-end rule of visitor experiences associated with travel and tourism behavior. The study also suggests distinct roles for the visitors’ positive experiences of enjoyment, happiness, and pleasure with the demographic variables to explain the visitor satisfaction. Additionally, the research finding implies that the visitor experiences were enhanced at the peak and end moments rather than at the most memorable episodes during the historical tour activities. Tourism practitioners may provide a range of meaningful opportunities and differentiated programs with the participants by identifying the relationships between the peak-end experience and visitor satisfaction. Future research can focus on investigating other important antecedents of individuals’ experiences, and identifying the complex nature of visitors’ perceptions and their relationships with their experiences.     

基于Agent的景区游客行为仿真建模与应用——以颐和园为例

我国旅游景区内部客流管理一直以来都没有得到应有的重视。通过对颐和园景区"五一"小长假和"十一"黄金周客流持续2年的实际观测,采用基于Agent的仿真建模方法,构建了游客到达、游客移动、游客停留等景区游客基本行为模型及其仿真运行环境——基于Agent的景区游客行为仿真系统。系统的正确性验证表明,仿真系统的输出数据能够反映景区各停留点游客数量的真实情况;系统的灵敏性验证表明,入口游客数、游客在景点的停留时间以及流向景点方向的客流量3个参数能够引起仿真系统各景点游客数量的灵敏变化。所建系统能够预测景区客流的时空分布,能够通过变换仿真参数值进行各种客流调控措施的仿真实验,并给出具体调控参数以支持景区管理者的客流管理实践。     

Trends and Forecasts for Inbound Tourism to China

Summary

The development of tourism in China over the last two decades is reviewed. It is argued that the success of the economic reforms in China which has resulted in fast economic growth has also been the main cause of rapid tourism growth in China. Forecasts of international tourist arrivals by source country market and destination region within China are generated over the period 2001-05. An integrative approach is used which combines both time-series and econometric methodologies, termed structural integrated time-series econometric analysis (SITEA).     

A quantile regression analysis of tourism market growth effect on the hotel industry

This study used the quantile regression method to investigate how inbound tourism market growth proxied by the growth rate of total foreign tourist arrivals (GTA) affects the growth rate of sales (GS) and financial performance of hotel firms in Taiwan. The ordinary least squares estimation results of panel regression test revealed that GTA significantly affects GS, but has no significant effect on financial performance (proxied by hotel equity return). However, quantile regression tests revealed new and interesting results. GTA has a significant effect on GS at the different quantiles of GS. In comparison, although hotel equity return was not significantly related to GTA at the median and high quantiles, the effect of GTA on hotel equity return was statistically significant at the low quantiles. These results suggest that the effect of GTA on hotel equity return is asymmetric and state-dependent, conditional on the distributions of hotel equity return. The study further identified that GTA has a significant influence only on equity returns of hotels with a small size.     

Visitor Motivational Factors and Level of Satisfaction in Wellness Tourism: Comparison Between First-Time Visitors and Repeat Visitors

This study aims to examine the differences between visitor motivations and satisfaction between first-time visitors and return visitors to a recreation wellness tourist attraction site in South Korea. Data were collected using a questionnaire at a national arboretum and 573 samples were used for analysis. The study discovered that first-time visitor motivations were composed of four factors: “relaxation and rest”, “novelty”, “self-exploration”, and “accessibility”. The return visitor motivations were “sightseeing and experience”, “convenience for touring”, “self-exploration”, and “accessibility”. The desired outcomes motivating the visitation and level of satisfaction were different between first-time and return visitors. The results contribute practical information to managers and marketers not only of the arboretum, but also of wellness tourist attractions to improve strategic visitor management in Korea and beyond. The study strategically applies the arboretum as a competitive resource in a wellness tourism industry with strategic segmentation of visitors.     

Visitor spending and economic impacts of heritage tourism: a case study of the Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area

Heritage is regarded as one of the most significant and fastest growing components of tourism. The development of heritage tourism as a generator of income besides the enhancement of community pride and identity has emerged as an objective of both heritage sites and tourism planning. The discretionary nature of expenditures in heritage tourist places makes it crucial to understand visitor spending pattern. This is key in demonstrating the economic contribution to the community for the tourism planners. This presentation is based on an intercept survey of travelers to the Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area (SSNHA), comprising 37 counties in Northeast Iowa. Visitor spending pattern is discussed among four categories of heritage sites in the SSNHA: farms, museums, parks and gardens, and businesses. IMPLAN Input–Output Model is utilized to generate the direct, indirect and induced economic impact in the area.     

Convention tourism modelling

This paper introduces an approach for identifying the determinants of convention attendance at alternative cities. This approach permits planners to evaluate the relative importance of accessibility and attractiveness variables as determinants of convention attendance for each site. Four major convention sites in the USA are analysed to illustrate the procedure. In this example, accessibility was found to be far more important than attractiveness.     

Rethinking slavery heritage tourism

This paper argues that the investigation of slavery heritage within a ‘thana’- or ‘dark’ tourism framework invariably fails to appreciate the subtleties, power relationships and various contestations that are at play in both the presentation and consumption of former Transatlantic Slave Trade (TAST) sites. Instead, the authors argue that a combination of Halbwachs’ collective memory theory and Tunbridge and Ashworth's concept of dissonant heritage can provide a deeper understanding of tourism linked to such sites. A study of TAST sites in Ghana identified six key groups of stakeholders involved in the interpretation of slavery heritage, each with its own agenda, desire to remember or forget slave memories and desire to compose different narratives. By analysing collective slave memories, the study proposes a framework that demonstrates that tourism to TAST-related sites is complex and nuanced because it relates to the nature of the historic event itself, intrinsic qualities of TAST-related sites in terms of current relevance and the closeness of the event or site to each stakeholder.     

A Sales Forecasting Benchmarking Model

ABSTRACT

The present qualitative study utilized a long interview protocol to evaluate the sales forecasting process in the commercial restaurant setting. This qualitative study consisted of interviewing twelve managers representing seven companies. The results validated the four dimensions; functional integration, approach, systems, and performance measurement found earlier in more general business settings. The companies were found to exhibit characteristics of three of the four stages in the four dimensions. The fourth stage, representing the most actualized company, was not reached by any of the companies in this study. This could be interpreted to mean that the commercial restaurant setting is not as advanced as conquerable companies in the industry. The concept, training, emerged during the analysis. Scenarios were developed to explain the relationship of training to the original dimensions.