In their work, Yang, Pan and Song (2014) have analyzed the issue of the hotel demand by forecasting the relating to this topic website – Charleston Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, consequently the target was to “predict the demand for hotel rooms in a tourist destination.”
Among typical problems, which were omitted during current online pulse data analysis, there is one, which often negatively influenced the results of the research, namely “the heavy reliance on a consistent historic pattern and the stability of the economic structure” (Yang, Pan and Song, 2014). In contrast, the researchers took into account such issues and, while implementing web traffic volumes method with traditional econometric methods, the following advantages were reached: such data are real-time as well as high frequency, comparing with traditional forecasting models, which usually are based on the data, collected either quarterly or annually (Yang, Pan and Song, 2014). That is also based on the concept of flexibility of the consumer’s behavior who can under different factors change his attitude towards, as it is analyzed in the present case, certain hotel. The mentioned above data, namely web traffic volumes, indicating potential tourists’ interests, are, according to authors, leading indicators of tourist visits (Yang, Pan and Song, 2014).
At the end of the research, the authors propose their own suggestions for hotel managers, based on their discoveries. In particular, they advise to “build the bridge between between local tourism and hospitality industry and visitors that can be done with a help of such informational resource, as DMO (destination marketing organization) website, which, according to different researches is thought to be the best trip planning tool, a method for monitoring future tourist activities and analyzing online traces” (Yang, Pan and Song, 2014). Under the circumstances of relying of modern tourists on Internet resources, which they trust, the creation of DMO website for communication with tourists could play extremely important role in order to avoid misunderstandings, improve the quality of services and take into account the proposals of the clients.
Other researchers, Carr and Mendelsohn (2003), use other methodology, namely cost travel method, in order to assess the demand for visitor, who arrive in recreational sites. One of the basic phenomena, taken into account, is consumer surplus, which is the situation, when a client is likely to pay more for products and services, than their market price is. In the situation of Carr and Mendelsohn’s analysis, particularly in case of dealing with the coral reefs, which need additional protection, this “willingness” plays important role, since it does not only help to collect resources for site’s protection, but also has impact on the value of a site, since is taken as an element of the formula of such estimation (Carr, Mendelsohn, 2003).
The regression in each table is interpreted in accordance with certain indexes, which are taken during the estimation, and those are: “temperature, GPD per capita as well as dummy variable for Europe”(Carr, Mendelsohn, 2003). Temperature in the present case played important role, since people from warmer countries are more likely to overpay, than the others, to spend their holidays near Great Barrier Reef, than those from warmer ones(Carr, Mendelsohn, 2003). In contrast, people from cold countries would like to spend their time in tropical places.
After the analysis the authors have come to the conclusion that the best model for reefs was the polynomial model with relying on quadric function of travel cost, the 2-stage least squares estimate of demand of which provided the best estimate of costs (Carr, Mendelsohn, 2003).
As it has been done in the previous research, Carr and Mendelsohn give their own proposals for policymakers, namely they ask them to prevent the ecosystem from damaging by negative factors. They propose to establish simple programs to “dissipate water pollution, limit mining, and limit unsustainableor destructive fishing” (Carr, Mendelsohn, 2003). This could be beneficial, since the protective and healthy area attracts more tourists and is usually beneficial for the authorities.
References
1. Carr, L. & Mendelsohn, R. (2003). Valuing Coral Reefs: A Travel Analysis of The Great Barrier Reef. Ambio 32(5), 353-357.
2. Yang,Y., Pan, B. & Song, H. (2014). Predicting Hotel Demand Using Destination Marketing Organization’s Web Traffic Data Journal of Travel Research. 53(4) 433–447
