Forecasting Tourism: Expenditures versus Arrivals

This article examines issues relating to the measurement and forecasting of international tourist expenditures and tourism arrivals. It shows that the two series fluctuate differently, and examines the accuracy of six different forecasting techniques (time series and econometric causal models) to forecast tourism expenditures. The results show that the accuracy of the forecasts differs depending on the country being forecast, but that the no-change model and Brown's double exponential smoothing are, overall, the two most accurate methods for forecasting international tourism expenditures.