Hotel tax receipts and the ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’: a time series intervention seasonal ARIMA model with time-varying variance

This study examines the influence of the release of a best-selling book and movie, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, set in Savannah, Georgia on local tourism demand. Tourism demand is proxied by revenue collected from an ad valorem hotel room tax in Savannah. The hotel tax revenue series is first modelled as a seasonal ARIMA model with three intervention variables: an index variable to capture the influence of the best-selling book and two dummy variables to represent the impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and hurricane Floyd. The presence of time-varying variance in the residuals is captured through an ARCH model. The results indicate that the book index had a positive and significant impact on hotel tax receipts, while the dummy variables for the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and hurricane Floyd were each negative with only the dummy variable for hurricane Floyd marginally significant.