Tourism Analytics, the Case for Hainan China

This work studies the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry in Hainan province, China. We analyzed the data trend changes of overnight domestic tourists, foreign tourists, and tourism revenue using time series models and derive several insights from it. The COVID-19 epidemic caused a significant negative impact on the tourism revenue of Hainan province. In February 2020, the tourism revenue decreased by 88% as compared to the same month in 2019. We examined the tourist data with time series models and discovered that although the number of tourists decreased significantly, the tourism revenue continued to increase and achieved year on year (YoY) growth rate of 20% in December 2020. This could be due to three reasons: first since it is more inconvenient for tourists to travel and will cost them more from spending like arrival test or quarantine cost. Travelers who are willing to travel during this period will spend more during their travel, that is, the per capita consumption is higher than before; second, some travelers were quarantined in Hainan as entry point to China from another country, which brings up the revenues of hotels and restaurants; third, people from Hainan province are more willing to travel within the province, that contributes to further increase the overall tourism revenue. Finally, we made suggestions following these observations to increase tourism revenue in the time of the epidemic.