A Data-Driven Approach to Tourism Demand Forecasting: Integrating Web Search Data into a SARIMAX Model

Tourism is a core sector of Singapore’s economy, contributing significantly to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment. Accurate tourism demand forecasting is essential for strategic planning, resource allocation, and economic stability, particularly in the post-COVID-19 era. This study develops...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Geun-Cheol Lee
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-05-01
Series:Data
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/10/5/73
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1849711516367978496
author Geun-Cheol Lee
author_facet Geun-Cheol Lee
author_sort Geun-Cheol Lee
collection DOAJ
description Tourism is a core sector of Singapore’s economy, contributing significantly to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment. Accurate tourism demand forecasting is essential for strategic planning, resource allocation, and economic stability, particularly in the post-COVID-19 era. This study develops a SARIMAX-based forecasting model to predict monthly visitor arrivals to Singapore, integrating web search data from Google Trends and external factors. To enhance model accuracy, a systematic selection process was applied to identify the effective subset of external variables. Results of the empirical experiments demonstrate that the proposed SARIMAX model outperforms traditional univariate models, including SARIMA, Holt–Winters, and Prophet, as well as machine learning-based approaches such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs). When forecasting the 24-month period of 2023 and 2024, the proposed model achieves the lowest Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 7.32%.
format Article
id doaj-art-bb3b2de2389143c7a7ad036ff674a5c7
institution DOAJ
issn 2306-5729
language English
publishDate 2025-05-01
publisher MDPI AG
record_format Article
series Data
spelling doaj-art-bb3b2de2389143c7a7ad036ff674a5c72025-08-20T03:14:36ZengMDPI AGData2306-57292025-05-011057310.3390/data10050073A Data-Driven Approach to Tourism Demand Forecasting: Integrating Web Search Data into a SARIMAX ModelGeun-Cheol Lee0College of Business, Konkuk University, Seoul 05029, Republic of KoreaTourism is a core sector of Singapore’s economy, contributing significantly to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment. Accurate tourism demand forecasting is essential for strategic planning, resource allocation, and economic stability, particularly in the post-COVID-19 era. This study develops a SARIMAX-based forecasting model to predict monthly visitor arrivals to Singapore, integrating web search data from Google Trends and external factors. To enhance model accuracy, a systematic selection process was applied to identify the effective subset of external variables. Results of the empirical experiments demonstrate that the proposed SARIMAX model outperforms traditional univariate models, including SARIMA, Holt–Winters, and Prophet, as well as machine learning-based approaches such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs). When forecasting the 24-month period of 2023 and 2024, the proposed model achieves the lowest Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 7.32%.https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/10/5/73tourism demand forecastingSARIMAXexogenous variablesGoogle Trendstime-series analysispost-COVID-19
spellingShingle Geun-Cheol Lee
A Data-Driven Approach to Tourism Demand Forecasting: Integrating Web Search Data into a SARIMAX Model
Data
tourism demand forecasting
SARIMAX
exogenous variables
Google Trends
time-series analysis
post-COVID-19
title A Data-Driven Approach to Tourism Demand Forecasting: Integrating Web Search Data into a SARIMAX Model
title_full A Data-Driven Approach to Tourism Demand Forecasting: Integrating Web Search Data into a SARIMAX Model
title_fullStr A Data-Driven Approach to Tourism Demand Forecasting: Integrating Web Search Data into a SARIMAX Model
title_full_unstemmed A Data-Driven Approach to Tourism Demand Forecasting: Integrating Web Search Data into a SARIMAX Model
title_short A Data-Driven Approach to Tourism Demand Forecasting: Integrating Web Search Data into a SARIMAX Model
title_sort data driven approach to tourism demand forecasting integrating web search data into a sarimax model
topic tourism demand forecasting
SARIMAX
exogenous variables
Google Trends
time-series analysis
post-COVID-19
url https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/10/5/73
work_keys_str_mv AT geuncheollee adatadrivenapproachtotourismdemandforecastingintegratingwebsearchdataintoasarimaxmodel
AT geuncheollee datadrivenapproachtotourismdemandforecastingintegratingwebsearchdataintoasarimaxmodel