Comparative analysis of exponential smoothing models to tourists’ arrivals in Serbia

Seasonality is one of the main aspects affecting tourism. Considering the rapid increase in international tourism demand over the last few decades, predictions of future trends of tourism demand are of particular importance for the Government and the economy. We analyze the seasonality of tourist presence in different cities in Serbia. In this paper, the exponential smoothing models have been applied on the data that was taken from Republic Statistical Office (RSO). The research was conducted on monthly data relating to the number of overnight stays in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Niš during the period from January 2000 to December 2013. The precision of the obtained predictions is determined by comparing the RMSE and BIC precision measures. Based on the selected data, forecasting was made and it is concluded that the selected models correspond to the observed data very well.