ESTIMATING TOURISTS’ NUMBER ON EACH TOUR USING ENTROPY MODEL

Abstract

The crowding in and surrounding tourism areas caused by the growing tourism industry has dissatisfied tourists and residents. However, the tourism industry's economic impact is significant, so it is necessary to mitigate the crowding while keeping the industry growing. To do so, it is essential to understand the tourists' behaviour in detail. This paper established the entropy model for estimating the number of tourists on each tour. The validity of the model and the accuracy of the estimation results were verified by replicating the questionnaire results using the established model. In addition, the efficacy of Wilson's and Sasaki's entropy models was compared. The results showed that Sasaki's entropy model, which considered the selection probability, could improve the accuracy of the model and reduce the computation time. The results of sensitivity analysis confirmed that Sasaki's entropy model showed better results in cases where the total number of tourists became large.