The impact of insurgency in the deep south of Thailand on the arrival of Malaysian tourists to Betong district, Yala province using SARIMA with intervention model

Abstract

This paper investigated the impacts of the insurgency on the arrival of Malaysian tourists to the Betong district in Yala province by applying the seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average with the intervention model. The results revealed that ten incidents had a significant impact on the number of Malaysian tourist arrivals, such as the bombing of electricity pole that led to the highest decrease in tourist arrivals to approximately 17,413 persons in July 2015. Moreover, the forecasts of the SARIMA (1,1,1) (1,0,1)12 with intervention model revealed that the number of Malaysians traveling to Betong in the first quarter of 2020 before COVID-19 pandemic were 24,193, 31,659 and 25,309 persons, respectively, which are close to the preliminary number of the international tourist arrivals to Yala.