Now- and Forecasting of Tourist Overnight Stays, Revenues and Value Added for Austria

By the application of appropriate modeling approaches prevailing information gaps will be filled and thus provide the tourism industry with new decision-making tools to focus not only on the quantitative growth of guest arrivals and tourist overnight stays, but also on increasing the value generated by tourism services. For this purpose, a tool will be created that will allow the monitoring of tourism cycles based on turnover and value-added indicators. Different forecasting models are used for the variables to be forecast and their performance is weighed against each other based on forecast accuracy and error minimisation. Robust results were shown across the three forecast variables, with the lowest average absolute forecast errors for forecasting sector I gross value added, followed by accommodation and food service revenues. The shrinkage models applied had the highest forecasting quality relative to the other forecasting models. Based on these results, industry representatives and tourism organisations should be able to make more informed decisions about development goals in the future, while the lessons learned should also inform the formulation of future policies.