Where Should We Go? Internet Searches and Tourist Arrivals

17 Pages Posted: 28 Feb 2020

See all articles by Serhan Cevik

Serhan Cevik

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Date Written: January 2020

Abstract

The widespread availability of internet search data is a new source of high-frequency information that can potentially improve the precision of macroeconomic forecasting, especially in areas with data constraints. This paper investigates whether travel-related online search queries enhance accuracy in the forecasting of tourist arrivals to The Bahamas from the U.S. The results indicate that the forecast model incorporating internet search data provides additional information about tourist flows over a univariate approach using the traditional autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model and multivariate models with macroeconomic indicators. The Google Trends-augmented model improves predictability of tourist arrivals by about 30 percent compared to the benchmark ARIMA model and more than 20 percent compared to the model extended only with income and relative prices.

Keywords: Real effective exchange rates, Economic growth, Economic forecasting, Real exchange rates, Personal income, Forecasting, tourist arrivals, Google Trends, time-series models, WP, ARIMA, tourist arrival, autoregressive, forecast model, time-series

JEL Classification: C22, C53, E27, E37, J60, J64, E01, O24, C, D4

Suggested Citation

Cevik, Serhan, Where Should We Go? Internet Searches and Tourist Arrivals (January 2020). IMF Working Paper No. 20/22, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3545288

Serhan Cevik (Contact Author)

International Monetary Fund (IMF) ( email )

700 19th Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20431
United States

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