International arrivals forecasting for Australian airports and the impact of tourism marketing expenditure

Abstract

An airport’s international passenger arrivals are susceptible to exogenous and endogenous factors (such as economic conditions, flight services, fluctuations and shocks). Accurate and reliable airport passenger demand forecasts are imperative for policymaking and planning by airport and airline management as well as by tourism authorities and operators. This article employs the Box–Jenkins SARIMA, SARIMAX and SARIMAX/EGARCH volatility models to forecast international passenger arrivals for the eight key Australian airports (Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Darwin, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney). Monthly international tourist arrivals between January 2006 and September 2012 are used for the empirical analysis. All the forecasting models are highly accurate with the lower values of mean absolute percentage error, mean absolute error and root mean squared error. The findings suggest that the international passenger arrivals of Australian airports are affected by positive and negative shocks and tourism marketing expenditure is also a significant factor influencing the majority of Australian airports’ international passenger arrivals.