Analyzing the Behavioral Trends in Tourist Arrivals from Japan to Australia

Abstract

As tourism forecasts are obtained based on past observations, an historical analysis of Japan's postwar economic success, social factors, and the national government's institutional policies and reforms can help to provide a better understanding of the growth in Japanese outbound travel and the trending patterns in Japanese tourist arrivals to Australia. To achieve these aims, a statistical analysis of the time series behavior of tourism demand, specifically quarterly tourist arrivals from Japan to Australia from 1976 to 2000, are examined. In addition to analyzing the full sample, the authors also consider three subsamples, namely quarter 1 of 1976 to quarter 2 of 1987, quarter 3 of 1987 to quarter 2 of 1997, and quarter 3 of 1997 to quarter 2 of 2000, to evaluate the sensitivity of the estimates to changes in trends arising from the 1987 stock market crash and the Asian economic and financial crises in 1997. Autoregressive moving average time series models are estimated to analyze alternative patterns of trending behavior within this class of models.