No abstract

This paper investigates the feasibility of using different generalizations of the nearest neighbour method in a tourism forecasting problem. The method is widely employed in different fields of research but, inexplicably, it is practically unknown in tourism forecasting. The analysis is centred not only in knowing the exact value of arrivals (point prediction), but also in anticipating the direction of the sign movement (sign prediction). Furthermore, this study also offers further evidence on a subject scarcely treated in tourism economics: the searching of predictable non-linear dynamics. The results encourage the use of this technique and reveal the existence of a non-linear seasonal effect in the analysed tourism time series.