Assessment of applicability of forecasting methods of passenger traffic by air as a key factor in tourism development in Poland

Abstract

The author of the paper focuses on the key factor in tourism development which is air passenger transport. It considers the forecast for five airports which in the first half year attended to the largest number of passengers as well the overall passenger traffic in Poland. The forecast was made for the first two quarters of 2018 on the basis of the quarterly data from the period of 2011-2018. The method applied in the paper consisted in making calculations for varying number L of recent years taken into account in the model. The model of additive and multiplicative seasonality was considered. The research problem was formulated as the question whether the smallest value of residual standard deviation corresponds to the smallest value of error MAPE (Mean Absolute Percentage Error). By applying the method of trends of univariate periods the following were determined: residual standard deviation, relative error ex ante VA and forecast error MAPE. The purpose was to answer the question whether the minimum value of MAPE corresponds to the minimum value of standard deviation S, or to the smallest value of error ex ante. In the case of the linear trend, a simplified method of "three points" was proposed, whereas for the parabolic trend, a method of "four points" was proposed. It was found that the method of trends of univariate periods yields the forecast error ex post comparable to the one of classic methods of seasonality analysis (including the Klein method).