Modeling and forecasting tourism demand: the case of flows from Mainland China to Taiwan

The study of tourism demand is attracting more and more attention. Hence, it is important to understand the variables that affect tourism demand and to forecast the demand. Many studies have been conducted to analyze the demands in various countries. Recently, China has been expected to become one of the largest originators of outbound tourists in the world. Hence, it is interesting to explore what the variables are that affect the Mainland Chinese arrivals to Taiwan and to forecast its corresponding tourism demand. This study applies neural networks to select proper models, and then to forecast the demand.