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A note on the use of Markov chains to analyze the off‐peak season provision of guided tours to tourists
Author(s) -
Batabyal Amitrajeet A.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
international journal of tourism research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.155
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1522-1970
pISSN - 1099-2340
DOI - 10.1002/jtr.812
Subject(s) - markov chain , tourism , metric (unit) , constraint (computer aided design) , computer science , fraction (chemistry) , marketing , markov model , econometrics , operations research , mathematics , business , geography , machine learning , chemistry , geometry , archaeology , organic chemistry
In this note, we provide answers to two hitherto unstudied questions in the tourism literature. Specifically, we first show how the theory of discrete‐time Markov Chains (DTMCs) can be used to effectively model and analyze the problem of providing guided tours to tourists during the off‐peak season. Next, we model the existence of a capacity constraint and then show how DTMC theory can be used to derive a metric of interest to an optimizing tour providing firm, namely, the long run fraction of tourists to whom the firm under study is unable to provide tours. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.