Ex ante tourism forecasting assessment

Abstract

Although numerous studies have focused on forecasting international tourism demand, minimal light has been shed on the factors influencing the accuracy of real-world ex ante forecasting. This study evaluates the forecasting errors across various prediction horizons by analyzing the annually published forecasts of the Pacific Asia Tourism Association (PATA) from 2013 to 2017, comprising 765 origin–destination pairs covering 31 destinations in the region. The regression analysis shows that the variation in tourism demand and gross domestic product (GDP), covariation between tourism demand and GDP, order of lagged variables, origin, destination, and forecasting method all have significant effects on the forecasting accuracy over different horizons. This suggests that tourism forecasting should account for these factors in the future.