Scenarios as a tool for identifying future tourism demand

Abstract

Numerical tourism forecasting models are well-established tools in the tourism industry to identify tourist arrivals for a particular destination at a given point of time in the future. Recent events have shown how unexpected external factors like terrorism and disease can alter international tourism flows. Forecasts of this nature arc not helpful in predicting changes in the future composition of demand. Given the obvious uncertainty of the future, this paper explains how the use of scenarios may enable tourism planners to consider a variety of possible future developments in order to facilitate the preparation for changing tourism demand. Using existing population scenarios constructed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, this paper gives an example of how traditional forecasting methods can be complemented by utilising demographic variables when analysing future tourism demand.