Analysis of the Tourism Industry in Ecuador by Means of Soft Computing Techniques

This document analyzes tourism companies' operations-related data by focusing on the use of dimensionality reduction as well as clustering techniques. To do this, a case study has been defined which examines the most relevant variables of small and medium-sized companies' common operations in the tourism sector in Ecuador. Data selected for said study corresponds to the year 2015, being the latest official information available. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied as a method of dimensionality reduction to simplify the complexity of spaces with multiple dimensions. The data set is also analyzed with the k-means clustering technique, defining different groups based on similar characteristics. The study provides information on tourism companies' operation in Ecuador before the pandemic due to COVID-19 as support in 'strategy making', in order to reactivate said industry via data-based decisions.