Third International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies

Abstract

The volume of visitations in the Canary Islands has made the tourism business the most important determinant for their economic development, playing a fundamental role in the generation of employment and income. Since 2011, tourist arrivals in the Canary Islands have been increasing, reaching a contribution of 34.3% in the islands’ productive system in 2016, with an average annual growth of 7.0% in the Tourist Gross Domestic Product (IMPACTUR 2016). Knowing the tourism demand depending on the origin countries would enable the structuration of service and cultural and leisure activities that the tourism market would offer with higher quality. Canary Islands inbound tourism market is diverse, with arrivals from United Kingdom (27%) and Germany (19%) dominating the market representing a 46% of the total arrivals and a 62% of the international arrivals. The aim of this paper is to provide a model for predicting Germany and British passenger arrivals to the Canary Islands one year ahead. Structural models will be used in this case through the univariate and multivariate state-space method incorporating seasonality and exogenous variables.