Forecasting the Tourism Environment Using a Consensus Approach

Abstract

Qualitative techniques are generally used to forecast the long-term tourism environment. Although the Delphi approach is often employed for this purpose, in this study an alternative consensus approach is adopted (on account of the radical nature of some of the possible tourism developments) that permits full discussion among the experts taking part in the forecasting exercise. The results show that the tourism experts expect advances in science and technology to have major impacts on tourism development during the period up to 2030.