Modeling of Tourist Profiles with Decision Trees in a World Heritage City: The Case of Cuenca (Ecuador)

ABSTRACT

This research project proposes the formulation of profiles composed of foreign and national tourists in a world heritage city as a contribution to the strategies of the Association of Accommodation Establishments in the city of Cuenca. A total of 1,293 surveys, gathered during holidays between 2015 and 2016, underwent a statistical analysis of decision trees and statistical regression using seven variables. In addition, by means of CART and Random Forest technical comparisons, the models and predictive variables were prioritized for marketing strategies and planning. Two tourist profiles were described, the backpacker type and the cultural type, with an error of 1%, where the variables of visitor age, daily average accommodation expense, and type of employment at the origin predicted the accommodation selection upon arrival at the tourist destination in a better way.

KEYWORDS:

• Grouping
• decision tree
• random forest
• offer and demand
• statistics
• tourist profiles
• world heritage city

Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank the Asociación Hotelera del Azuay for their cooperation, efforts and constructive criticism, and the Cuenca University Research Center for financing the Sustainable Tourism and Competitive Indicator Analysis with Impact in Public Policies, Government and Sustainable Management Strategy of Cuenca-Ecuador project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Calculated according to data obtained from the World Tourism Organization and the World Bank (World Bank, 2018; World Bank Group, 2016).

2 A traditional holiday that has been celebrated since 1961 every 24th of December, which consists of realizing a procession through the streets of the city, carrying aloft the statue of the image of the “Christ Child” in commemoration of Christmas (Solano, 2016).