Tourism demand forecasting with spatiotemporal features

Tourism demand forecasting is a crucial prerequisite for effective and efficient tourism management. This study develops a novel model based on deep learning methods for precise demand forecasting, namely, spatial-temporal fused graph convolutional network (ST-FGCN). ST-FGCN generates forecasts based on spatial effects extracted using graph convolutional network and temporal dependency captured through long short-term memory. A data-driven spatial matrix is used in our model to strengthen forecasting performance further. Two markedly different forecasting experiments verify the effectiveness of our model. Empirical results suggest that incorporating spatial effects can remarkably reduce forecasting errors. Furthermore, our model shows good applicability for data with different time granularity and different periods: before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. (c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.