Application of adaptive modeling in tourist flow studies

The article is devoted to forecasting as one of the areas of special scientific research, which makes it possible to assess the development prospects of tourist activities, to identify the main development factors and criteria for making effective management decisions. The article provides an overview of modern methods used in Russian and foreign scientific works to obtain forecasts in the field of tourism. The authors propose pilot version of obtaining a tourist flows forecast, one of the main indicators of the tourist destination competitiveness, based on the method of constructing adaptive models, which have proven themselves well in relation to the study of processes with an unstable nature of dynamics. It is these models are able to consider the evolution of the phenomenon under study, naturally and gradually adjusting to changing conditions. Tourism depending on many external factors, often finds itself in conditions of uncertainty, which was clearly illustrated by the situation of the pandemic negatively affected all areas of the tourism business. However, any crisis ultimately leads to the search for new opportunities for business development, management optimization, strategic and tactical planning, in which the role of forecasting is extremely important. Also, in favor of adaptive forecasting can be attributed the ability to consider the seasonal component that has prevalent impact on tourism. The proposed model is universal and can be applied to different types and forms of tourism, including niche ones. The model is tested using the example of mass tourism, in particular on the case city of Barcelona, which for a long time (up to 2019 inclusive) has been showing signs of overtourism. The dynamics of indicators of tourism development for 2010-2019 from the official websites of Spain confirms it.