Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/224730 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Citation: 
[Journal:] Journal of Tourism, Heritage & Services Marketing [ISSN:] 2529-1947 [Volume:] 6 [Issue:] 3 [Publisher:] International Hellenic University [Place:] Thessaloniki [Year:] 2020 [Pages:] 3-13
Publisher: 
International Hellenic University, Thessaloniki
Abstract: 
Purpose: This study compares three different methods to predict foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) to Sri Lanka from top-ten countries and also attempts to find the best-fitted forecasting model for each country using five model performance evaluation criteria. Methods: This study employs two different univariate-time-series approaches and one Artificial Intelligence (AI) approach to develop models that best explain the tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka from the top-ten tourist generating countries. The univariate-time series approach contains two main types of statistical models, namely Deterministic Models and Stochastic Models. Results: The results show that Winter's exponential smoothing and ARIMA are the best methods to forecast tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka. Furthermore, the results show that the accuracy of the best forecasting model based on MAPE criteria for the models of India, China, Germany, Russia, and Australia fall between 5 to 9 percent, whereas the accuracy levels of models for the UK, France, USA, Japan, and the Maldives fall between 10 to 15 percent. Implications: The overall results of this study provide valuable insights into tourism management and policy development for Sri Lanka. Successful forecasting of FTAs for each market source provide a practical planning tool to destination decision-makers.
Subjects: 
foreign tourist arrivals
winter’s exponential smoothing
ARIMA
simple recurrent neural network
Sri Lanka
JEL: 
C5
Z32
C45
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version
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