Indian tourism footfall forecasting
A time-series comparison system for forecasting visitor footfall and explaining seasonal patterns at selected Indian destinations using official aggregate data.
Project definition
Problem statement
Visitor footfall changes with seasons, holidays, destination type, reporting frequency, and unusual events. Annual totals alone do not show short-term patterns, while limited historical records can make complex models unreliable.
The engineering problem is to prepare consistent aggregate time series, identify seasonal structure, compare forecasting methods honestly, and show uncertainty and data limitations with every result.
Project objectives
- Prepare aggregate visitor series for selected destinations, states, or monuments from official sources.
- Analyse trend, seasonality, holidays, gaps, and structural changes in each series.
- Compare naive, seasonal, statistical, and selected machine-learning forecasts.
- Use rolling backtests to measure performance at multiple forecast horizons.
- Present forecasts, uncertainty, and historical accuracy in a readable dashboard.
System design
System modules
Tourism data importer
Loads approved aggregate visitor records and preserves source, geography, visitor category, period, unit, and release date.
Series validator
Checks frequency, missing periods, duplicates, revisions, category changes, and unusual values before modelling.
Seasonal analyser
Calculates trend and seasonal components and relates prepared calendar features to recurring patterns.
Forecast engine
Runs naive, seasonal, statistical, and selected machine-learning models through a common interface.
Backtesting module
Compares errors and interval coverage across rolling dates, destinations, and horizons.
Destination dashboard
Shows source data, seasonality, forecasts, uncertainty bands, model history, and downloadable summaries.
Methodology
System workflow
- 01Select destination
The user selects a prepared destination or region, visitor category, time frequency, and forecast horizon.
- 02Validate series
The system displays coverage, gaps, revisions, unusual periods, and the transformations used.
- 03Analyse pattern
Trend, seasonal components, and prepared calendar features are calculated from past observations only.
- 04Run backtests
Selected models forecast from historical cut-off dates and are compared against naive baselines.
- 05Display forecast
The best documented result is shown with uncertainty, accuracy history, source date, and limitations.
Demonstration scenario
A user selects a prepared destination with monthly visitor data. The dashboard displays the trend and recurring seasonal peak, then compares a seasonal baseline with two forecast models through rolling backtests. The selected model produces the next six months with an uncertainty band and its previous accuracy.
Engineering
Technical architecture
- Web application
- Nuxt and Vue for destination selection, historical charts, seasonal views, model comparison, and forecast export.
- Forecast API
- FastAPI for prepared series, decomposition, model execution, backtests, forecasts, and experiment records.
- Data layer
- PostgreSQL for official source records, cleaned series, calendar features, model versions, backtests, and forecasts.
- Modelling pipeline
- Python, Pandas, statistical models, and scikit-learn with time-aware transformations and replaceable model adapters.
- Evaluation
- Rolling-origin comparisons, naive baselines, horizon-level errors, prediction intervals, and structural-break notes.
- Delivery
- Docker-based setup with prepared destination series, saved model configurations, and reproducible evaluation commands.
Testing
Evaluation
Evaluation measures
- Mean absolute error, root mean squared error, and symmetric mean absolute percentage error
- Performance relative to naive and seasonal-naive forecasts
- Prediction-interval coverage and average interval width
- Accuracy across destinations, seasons, and forecast horizons
- Sensitivity to missing periods and unusual event years
- Data preparation and forecast execution time
System boundaries
- The prototype uses aggregate public statistics and does not track individual visitors.
- Forecasts cover only the selected destinations, visitor categories, and published time periods.
- Unexpected policy, weather, transport, health, or social events may not be represented by historical patterns.
- The forecasts support analysis and do not replace operational planning by tourism authorities.
Included
- 01Destination history and seasonal-analysis dashboard
- 02Data preparation, forecasting, and backtesting pipelines
- 03Model comparison and forecast-uncertainty visualisations
- 04Prepared official aggregate data, experiments, and results
- 05Complete source code in a private GitHub repository
- 06Complete project documentation with synopsis, abstract, methodology, data-flow diagrams, forecast results, screenshots, and conclusion
- 07Setup and usage guide
Project record
No buyer information is collected on this page.
- Permanent project ID
- GP-DA-1NYBF62
- Catalogued
- 21 Aug 2026
- Completed
- Pending
- Verified
- Pending
- Demonstration
- Added when ready
Handover
After purchase
- 01Payment is confirmed
The project is marked unavailable and cannot be purchased again.
- 02Repository access is granted
The buyer's submitted GitHub account receives access to the private repository.
- 03The purchase record is delivered
The certification sheet is prepared from the reviewed buyer details and sent privately by email.