CRUISE TOURISM DEMAND FORECASTING - THE CASE OF DUBROVNIK

The purpose - Cruising is nowadays a mass phenomenon since an increasing number of passengers worldwide have been taking part in this form of tourism. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to forecast cruise tourism demand at the level of micro destination. Design/Methodology/Approach - Dubrovnik has become one of the most important and most frequently visited destinations for cruise tourism in the Mediterranean. The rapidly increasing number of passengers on cruise voyages has put Dubrovnik among the leading cruise destinations in the Mediterranean. Dubrovnik is now facing the problem of concentration of a large number of ships and passengers in a short period of time. Consequently, this paper aims at forecasting the number of passengers from cruise ships within the next five year period in order to highlight eventual consequences and the necessity for implementation of a different management policy in accepting cruise ships and passengers at the destination to satisfy the requirements of both the passengers from cruisers and stationary tourists on one side and on the other side to improve the living standards of the local community. For this purpose the seasonal ARIMA model has been used which incorporates both seasonal autoregressive and moving average factor in the modelling process. Findings - With application of the above mentioned model and having in mind that forecasting was carried out under assumption that there will be no significant changes in the existing conditions it is to be concluded the cruise ship passenger arrivals in Dubrovnik area in 2015 will reach 1.294.316 making an increase of 31% in comparison with the year 2011 at an average growth rate of 7.06%. Originality of the research - Research was carried out to indicate the necessity for implementation of the new model of management for passengers from cruise ships by tourism destination management.