Forecasting Tourist Arrivals to Colombia from Google Trends Search Criteria

Alexander Correa ()
Additional contact information
Alexander Correa: Universidad EAN

Lecturas de Economía, 2021, issue 95, 105-134

Abstract: This study examines whether the Google Trends search criteria are useful in forecasting the monthly arrival of tourists to Colombia. To this end, a baseline model that employs as a predictor the lags values of tourist arrivals is compared with two alternative specifications: (i) the baseline model augmented with monthly data from Google Trends; and (ii) the baseline model but modified with the inclusion of weekly data from Google Trends. The results show statistically significant evidence that Google Trends data provide benefits for the evaluation and prediction of tourist arrivals to Colombia. High-frequency (weekly) data adds high predictive value compared to models that use data of the same frequency (monthly). In this way, the tourism industry and those in charge of tourism public policy can rely on the predictive capacity of Google Trends data to improve their planning processes in the short and medium run.

Keywords: tourism demand; Google Trends; forecasting; Mixed Data Sampling; tourist arrivals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C53 L83 Z32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/lecturasdeeconomia/article/view/343462 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lde:journl:y:2021:i:95:p:105-134

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Lecturas de Economía, Departamento de Economía, Calle 67, 53-108, Medellin 050010, Colombia.

DOI: 10.17533/udea.le.n95a343462

Access Statistics for this article

Lecturas de Economía is currently edited by Carlos Andrés Vasco Correa

More articles in Lecturas de Economía from Universidad de Antioquia, Departamento de Economía Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Carlos Andrés Vasco Correa ().