Determining the Iranian Tourist's Demand for Traveling to Turkey by Using Artificial Neural Networks

For Iranian citizens traveling to turkey without visa is possible and the main reasons of Iranian citizens for traveling to Turkey are; resting, leisure time, enjoying various attractions like sea side, cultural, trading especially buying clothes and etc. The tourism industry is one of the main driving forces of Turkish economy. The increase and decrease of traveler to turkey depends on various factors in both national and international levels. This article wants to forecast the amount of Iranian tourist which traveling to Turkey by using the Artificial Neural Network; (ANN). On the other hand, the present article attempts to attend to explore the importance of used variables in tourism demand to Turkey. The variables effects on Iranians’ tourism demand were extracted by exploring the literature review, and the present research just utilized 13 variables for forecasting the tourism demand. The results of the research showed that accessed estimates had less error in comparison with real data. According to present research, four important variables effect on tourism demand of Iranian citizens are the daily crude oil producing in Iran, inflation volume in Iran, gross domestic product in Turkey, gross domestic product for working people in Iran.