FORECASTING TOURISM DEMAND AND SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT IN YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK
Annotatsiya
Modelling tourism demand over the long term is essential for the effective and sustainable management of established protected sites. In this study, the recreation visits at Yellowstone National Park were analyzed using a unique historical dataset covering the years 1904 to 2024. Using scenario forecasts through 2030, the results indicate a gradual increase over the last century from a very small beginning to multi-million annual visits. These cumulative trends include the influence of the car age and the expansion of the Mission 66 program, as well as significant disruptors such as the occurrence of World War II and the COVID-19 pandemic. These monthly visitations were modelled using the ARIMA approach. After testing the results using the criteria mentioned above, the final model applied was the SARIMA (2, 1, 1) (1, 1, 1,12), which indicates the dominance of annual seasonality and the visits return to normal rapidly, but lacks autocorrelation and volatility. These scenario-based forecasts indicate a mature demand pattern: the base projection elevation in annual visitations is from 4.19 million in 2026 to 4.36 million in 2030, with a planning range of 3.77 to 5.35 million. These findings illustrate the significance of summer congestion and the effectiveness of coupled time series and scenario modelling to deal with congestion in heavily utilized national parks.