Ant colony optimization approach for estimating tourism receipts and expenditures: The case of Turkey

The present study develops two forms to estimate tourism receipts and expenditures to Turkey based on ant colony optimization (ACO) approach. ACO approach is first used to estimate tourism receipts and expenditures. Tourism has become one of the largest and most rapidly growing sectors in the world economy during the second half of the 20th century. So forecasting correctly tourism receipts and expenditures is vital for economics. ACO is a multiagent system in which the behavior of each ant is inspired by the foraging behavior of real ants to solve an optimization problem. Ant Colony Optimization Tourism Receipt Estimation (ACOTRE) model uses the gross national product (GNP), balance of receipt - expenditure, rate of tourism receipts in the export earnings, and average expenditure per foreigner. Furthermore, Ant Colony Optimization Tourism Expenditure Estimation (ACOTEE) model uses the GNP, balance of receipt - expenditure, rate of tourism expenditure in the import earnings, and average expenditure per citizen. Linear and quadratic forms of both ACOTRE and ACOTEE are proposed and quadratic models of both provided better fit solution. The proposed models can be used as an alternative solution for estimating tourism receipts to any country. The ACOTRE and ACOTEE models plan the tourism receipts to Turkey until 2025 under some scenarios. © 2009 Cognizant Comm. Corp