Tourism forecasting: accuracy of alternative econometric models

This study evaluates the forecasting accuracy of six alternative econometric models in the context of the demand for international tourism in Denmark. These econometric models are special cases of a general autoregressive distributed lag specification. In addition, the forecasting accuracy of two univariate time series models is evaluated for benchmark comparison purposes. The forecasting competition is based on annual data on inbound tourism to Denmark. Individual models are estimated for each of the six major origin countries over the period 1969-93 and forecasting performance is assessed using data for the period 1994-97. Rankings of these forecasting models over different time horizons are established based on mean absolute percentage error and root mean square percentage error. (C) 2002 International Institute of Forecasters. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.