Cuba in the tourism industry: demand studies

Abstract

The tourism industry is considered a key factor for economic development and has gained importance in national, regional and global economies. As a result, it represents one of the vital sources of income in many developing countries, mainly in the Caribbean area. Added to this is the trend of an increasingly uncertain and dynamic world. Therefore, it is necessary to plan by means of tourism demand forecasting. Cuba, as a developing country, has one of the main economic activities: the tourism industry. However, there are no exhaustive studies in the specialized literature on demand forecasting methods in the country. Therefore, the main objective is to review the general trends and the evolution of tourism demand forecasting methods in a historical perspective and to trace the development of demand forecasting methods in Cuba to serve as a starting point for future research, as well as to carry out a large-scale search using as keywords: "forecasting", "demand" and "tourism". As main results, four classifications of the methods for tourism demand forecasting that have been implemented in Cuba and the existence of few demand forecasting studies in the tourism sector are determined; this makes it difficult to make decisions in forecasting the behavior of outbound markets.