FORECASTING FOREIGN GUEST NIGHTS IN GRADED ACCOMMODATION ESTABLISHMENTS IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

With 65616 square kilometers surrounded by the blue Indian Ocean on all sides, Sri Lanka is an amazing island located towards the south of India. The lush green tropical forests, scenic beauty, folklore, history, and rich culture have been attracting tourists for centuries. Hospitality is an important part of the tourism industry and includes transportation, accommodation, and entertainment. This study focused on the accommodation sector of the Sri Lankan tourism industry, and the main objective was to predict the total number of nights spent by all tourists known as foreign guest nights. If the number of guest nights is available over the next few months, it will be easier to have everything ready, including rooms, minibars, laundry, food & beverages, transportation, and parking facilities, etc. Therefore, from January 2010 to December 2019, monthly guest nights in seven resort regions such as Colombo City, Greater Colombo, South Coast, East Coast, High Country, Ancient Cities and Northern Region were obtained from the annual reports of the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority to perform a time series model using the Box-Jenkins methodology. Four models were identified based on the tentative model. SARIMA (0,1,0) (1,0,1)12 was selected as the best model to forecast foreign guest nights according to the minimum Mean Absolute Percentage Error, Mean Absolute Error, Akaike Information Criterion, and Bayesian Information Criterion values of the four models, and forecasting was done for the year 2020. This study will help to plan and take necessary steps regarding maintenance, staffing, waste management, security system, and capacity of graded accommodation with a better approach.