Analysis of demand for ecotourism towards economic growth in Sabah : evidence from international tourist arrival data / Mohammad Nashriq Noring

Sabah aim to be the leading of ecotourism sector in Malaysia because of the variety of natural resources especially from forest and marine life and it is becoming one of source of income for Sabah trough ecotourism sector. However, despite the successful of the ecotourism sector towards economic growth as reported by the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) of Sabah, there is a problem exist where there still too many natural resource in Sabah that has a potential to be the ecotourism sector that can contribute towards economic growth, which is still do not exposed by Sabah tourism department to visitors especially foreign visitors. As a result, recently demand for ecotourism is decrease. Due to this problem, a study on ecotourism demand is necessary and need to be done in order to predict the future demand for ecotourism towards economic growth. This study also will find out the most accurate technique that is useful to predict the future demand for ecotourism. The evidence from International tourist arrival data set will be used and divided by monthly, and it will be measure by using Univariate Modeling technique such Naive models, Moving Average, and Exponential Smoothing models.