Forecasting Tourist Arrivals with Keyword Search using Time Series

Tourism industry was driving Thailand's economy in 2019, generating 3.01 trillion Thai baht of revenue, so planning a marketing strategy for entrepreneurs is essential to attract tourists. Online media provide a popular channel for potential travelers to find information. Hence, this is one area of advertising for the operators to get the tourists' attention. In this research, a study of the accommodation tourism in Koh Samui area was performed, focusing on a search engine and using time series models for forecasting. The data set contains the keyword search index and the number of international visitors. The results show that the keywords are correlated to the actual visits by foreign tourists. Thus, the hotels and resorts can prepare their facilities for tourists better than without the forecasts. Moreover, hotel and resort owners can use the important keywords identified, to make their websites more attractive to visitors, with a search engine optimization approach.