The rapid growth of the tourism and hospitality industries serves as the major driving force for academic researchers to investigate the accurate forecasting of lodging demand in tourist destinations. For instance, Tsai et al. (2006) studied the relationship between hotel room demand/supply functions and room rate using a simultaneous equations model for determinants of room demand/supply in Las Vegas. In terms of optimal hotel rates, Pan (2007) proposed an optimal room rate model to set pricing strategies at peak or low seasons. Recently, Slattery (2009) suggested employing the Otus theory to study the relationships between economic structure and demand/ supply of hotel rooms.In this paper, a novel time series model is presented which models multivariate time series data. The advantage of this model is that the discovered factors are mutually independent and a univariate time series model can be applied to these factors without considering the factors' interdependence. The next section introduces the methodologies of independent component analysis. On the basis of this model, empirical studies on Hong Kong hotel occupancy rates are analyzed. The most dominant factor of infectious diseases is subsequently detected. At last, managerial implications and concluding remarks are provided. The modeling processIndependent component analysis (ICA) is a statistical technique that aims to capture observed data in terms of a linear combination of underlying latent variables. These latent variables are assumed to be non-Gaussian and mutually independent. A typical ICA model for an N-dimensional multivariate time series {x 1 =(x it , . . ., x Nt ) 0 }: t = 1, . . ., T) iswhere s t is a vector of statistically independent latent variables called independent components (ICs). A is an unknown constant mixing matrix, and T is the number of observations of the time series. The task of ICA is to identify both the ICs and the matrix A. Various algorithms for parameter estimation have been developed for ICA. Among them, a widely used one is the FastICA algorithm, which was proposed by Hyvä rinen et al. (2001).Since traditional ICA algorithms lack the ranking of ICs, Wu et al. (2006) proposed an ordering algorithm for independent components based on the minimizing mean squared errors (MSE) criterion. Based on this ordering method, ICs are sorted in a way such that modeling errors are minimized and dominant ICs are identified. Modifying the approach of Wu et al. (2006), the major steps of modeling hotel occupancy rate using ICA are presented as follows:1. Import the multivariate dataset (X) with number of N time series, each time series has T observations. 2. Use the FastICA algorithm to find the independent components (S) and the mixing matrix (A). 3. Use the independent component (IC) ordering method to order the ICs to find 1st IC, 2nd IC, 3rd IC, and so on. A B S T R A C TThe recent global outbreak of Influenza A (H1N1), or the more commonly known as swine flu, has negatively affected the tourism and hospitality industries in many ...

A study of the online browsing and purchasing habits of some 1,400 outbound travelers in Hong Kong demonstrates the analytical power of weight-of-evidence (WOE) data mining. The WOE approach allows analysts to identify and transform the variables with the most predictive power regarding the likelihood of tourists’ online preferences and decisions. The study found that just over one-third of the respondents browsed hotel-related websites, and about half of those browsers had booked a room on those sites. Browsers in Hong Kong tended to be young, well educated, and well traveled. Those who used the hotel websites for purchases were, of course, part of the browser group, and were likewise relatively well educated. However, one unexpected variable set off those who used the websites for a hotel purchase, the length of their most recent trip. One possible reason is that long-haul tourists want to be sure of their accommodations, or this may reflect hotels’ free-night offers. The convenient use of model-based customer segmentation and decision rules would help hospitality practitioners effectively manage their marketing resources and activities, and enhance information-based marketing strategies to attract target customers.

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