Malaysian tourism interest forecasting using Nonlinear Auto-Regressive (NAR) model

Tourism is an important industry for many nations including Malaysia. A tourism forecasting model is necessary in order to optimize resource allocation to maximize facilities and services to tourists. This paper proposes a Nonlinear AutoRegressive (NAR) model to forecast Malaysian tourism influx based on the volume of internet searches of the keyword ‘tourism Malaysia’. The volume of internet searches has been proven to correspond strongly with tourism in a particular area. Validation and fitting tests indicate valid model with a modest data fit ability.