Forecasting Models for Visitor Arrivals to New Zealand

摘要

International visitor arrivals are considered as a major source of foreign exchange, tourism-related employment and other tourism-related activities. For New Zealand, visitor arrivals by air transport from the eight major tourist source markets (Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, Germany, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US)) took a share of 77.08% of the total inbound visitor by air transport in 2013. This study employed the SARIMAX/(E)GARCH volatility models to forecast visitor arrivals by air transport to New Zealand from these eight tourist source markets. The monthly data between January 1993 and December 2013 were used for the empirical analysis. The empirical results showed the accurate and reliable forecasts for forecasting visitor arrivals by air transport from all studied markets. Importantly, the volatility models also presented evidence that Australia (New Zealand's largest tourist source markets) was not persistently affected by the short-run and long-run tourism demand shocks as China and the US. Also, the inverse leverage effect was found for the UK as the positive tourism demand shocks increased volatility more than the negative tourism demand shocks of an equal magnitude, which is dissimilar with Canada, Germany, Japan, and Korea. Significantly, the findings of this study allow policy makers in New Zealand to better understand the volatility impacts on visitor arrivals to New Zealand.