Unveiling fluctuation patterns of tourist volume: Insights from 56 major attractions in China

Bingcan Wang, Yong Li, Dogan Gursoy and Fengmin Yu
Additional contact information
Bingcan Wang: 118420Tianshui Normal University, China
Yong Li: 12538Nankai University, China
Dogan Gursoy: 6760Washington State University, USA
Fengmin Yu: 12419Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China

Tourism Economics, 2025, vol. 31, issue 4, 733-758

Abstract: Understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics of tourist volume is crucial for effective tourism management and planning. However, existing tourism data analysis methods often fail to capture the complex, continuous fluctuations and temporal variations in tourist behavior. To address this challenge, we apply functional data analysis (FDA) in the tourism industry to provide a more nuanced understanding of tourist volume dynamics. Specifically, we perform FDA on real-time tourist volume data from 56 major attractions in Beijing, China, revealing intrinsic fluctuation patterns, key factors driving tourist arrivals, and the dynamic characteristics of attractions across temporal scales. Our findings enhance the ability to optimize attraction management, marketing strategies, and policy-making, while also advancing tourism data science by integrating FDA. This approach fills the methodological gap and offers a comprehensive framework for exploring the spatiotemporal complexities of tourism data.

Keywords: data-driven analysis; destination management; fluctuation pattern; functional clustering; functional data analysis; tourist volume (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548166241295333 (text/html)

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:sae:toueco:v:31:y:2025:i:4:p:733-758

DOI: 10.1177/13548166241295333

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Tourism Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().