Statistical analysis of hotel plan popularity in regional tourist areas

The tourism industry admitted by World Tourism Organization is one of the greatest growth industry. In Japan, this industry has big influence for economics, employments and regional activations. In 2003, Japanese government regarded own country as tourism country and has been doing various policies to makes Japan tourism country. According to the statistical data from home page of Japan Tourism Agency, the number of foreign tourists visiting Japan reached 24.04 million in 2016, marking a 21.8% increase over the previous record of 19.74 million set in 2015 and setting a new record high for a fourth consecutive year. Against this backdrop, the national average guest room occupancy rate of lodging facilities in Japan was 60.0% in 2016. However, it is noteworthy that a major disparity in guest room occupancy rates has occurred between urban areas and regional areas. The guest room occupancy rates in Tokyo and Osaka Prefecture were 79.4% and 84.1%, respectively, whereas in ten prefectures, they were below 50%, with Nagano Prefecture having the lowest rate: 35.5%. In these circumstances, regional tourism promotion is essential for implementing the Japanese government's regional revitalization policies. Accordingly, in the present study, for the purpose of considering the increase of guest room occupancy rates of the lodging facilities in regional areas, we performed analysis of the popularity of hotel plans in Yamanashi Prefecture, which is located near Tokyo, and in Okinawa Prefecture, where the number of tourists from overseas has increased in recent years. To ascertain hotel plan options, we used morphological analysis of plan names. And We created plan groups by cluster analysis. We defined the purchase rate as an indicator for measuring hotel plan popularity. For the purpose of ascertaining hotel plan popularity, we use multiple regression analysis. As a result, we obtained new knowledge about hotel plan popularity.