Can multi-source heterogeneous data improve the forecasting performance of tourist arrivals amid COVID-19? Mixed-data sampling approach

Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has already caused enormous damage to the global economy and various industries worldwide, especially the tourism industry. In the post-pandemic era, accurate tourism deĀ­ mand recovery forecasting is a vital requirement for a thriving tourism industry. Therefore, this study mainly focuses on forecasting tourist arrivals from mainland China to Hong Kong. A new direction in tourism demand recovery forecasting employs multi-source heterogeneous data comprising economy-related variables, search query data, and online news data to motivate the tourism destination forecasting system. The experimental results confirm that incorporating multi-source heterogeneous data can substantially strengthen the forecasting accuracy. Specifically, mixed data sampling (MIDAS) models with different data frequencies outperformed the benchmark models.

Description

Tourism Management 98 (2023)

Keywords

Tourism demand forecasting,Online news,Search query data,MIDAS,GDFM

Citation