Analyzing Seasonality and Forecasting the Number of Tourists’ Overnight Stays in Constanta Municipality

Abstract

Constanta is perceived as the country’s largest port-city, but also as the most visited tourist cityon the Romanian Black Sea coast. For many generations, Constanta has been the place wheremany beautiful summer holidays memories are made, being associated especially with the sea andthe sun. These aspects highlight the seasonality in tourism activities. Using an important tourist traffic indicator, the "number of overnight stays", the objectives ofthis study are to analyze the seasonality in the tourism activity in Constanta, between 2010 and2016, and to predict the evolution of this indicator, per months, for 2017. We appreciate that theresults of this research are a relevant basis for various stakeholder debates (which carry out, orare related to, tourism activities), on the choice of a strategy that would contribute to the reductionof seasonality in the tourism activity carried out in Constanta.

Keywords

• seasonality
• number of overnight stays
• mobile backgrounds
• Gini index
• forecast