The AAA forecast is based on air travel during the holiday period. In their work of forecast, they are forecasting on how the trend of the number of people traveling during the holidays and specially on Christmas holidays would be within the next six years. According to the forecast, my opinion is that the forecast is quantitative rather than qualitative. The reasons are: – the figures and percentages are expressed for the general travel trends which will be observed. For instance, they say that 63.9 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more during the holiday season which is 2% drop from previous year 65.3 million. Similar expressions are used in their travel forecast in different regions.
I think the forecast is highly reliable. This is because the AAA forecast is based on a wide range of data collection. The arrival to the forecast was after wide a survey which was conducted not only within the state America, but which involved the whole globe through internet. A part from their own individual wide study on the data collected, the analysis and result were also compared with those of other companies which showed high level of congruency.
In addition, the study which they carried out was an integration of key determinants of the airline travel. They thus included the behaviors of the customers as well as the organizations’ operation and management trends. It unveiled to them that major companies were canceling greater percentages of flight to different parts of the due to certain factors such as safety. Even though this sounds surprising to many researchers as these companies seems to have a rising forecast on their annual profits, this controversial issues is solved through the business ethical considerations and costs incurred.
Reference
- Monster.com (2008): AAA Forecast: retrieved from http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2008/12/15/daily35.html, on January 27, 2009
- Brooks, H. and Hart, J. (1998): Objective limits on forecasting skill of rare events
