Forecasting as a Pinnacle for Rural Revitalization: Case Study of Mesowalai Homestay, Sabah State, Malaysia

Abstract

The rapid increase in the capacity of computers to store information has generated an abundance of data across all types of industries in the world.  Tourism forecast generates thousands of series of data nearly every time when considering domestic travel, as well as numerous levels of disaggregation such as geographical regions, purpose of travel and so on. Hence, accurate forecasting techniques have become a necessity in Mesowalai Homestay due to the influx of tourists to the area & its impact on socio- economic development so as to take advantage of such a plethora of information. Many studies have used different forecasting techniques to forecast tourist arrival; therefore this study adopts the regression approach to forecast tourist arrivals in Mesowalai homestay. The data comprises of tourist arrival from the year 2000 to 2010. For the modeling, year 2000 to 2006 was used for building up the tourist arrival model and year 2006 to 2010 was used to compare the forecast. The result shows that the peak tourist arrivals to Mesowalai homestay is put at 1123.55 annually while tourist growth increases by 233.2 annually.

Keywords: Volunteer tourism, Forecast, Regression Approach, Tourist Arrival, Homestay