A Case Study of Tourism in North Carolina State Parks Using Google Trends

The purpose of this study is to examine available innovative technologies as a means to forecast visitors to the North Carolina State Park system. The research will use Google Trends as the innovative technology and using the data from Google search queries to measure relationship from searches to visitors. This examination will include literature review and data collection methods. Furthermore, the quantitative measures will include the Pearson Correlation Coefficient (Pearson) and Time-Series Linear Modeling (TSLM), which accounts for seasonal and trending values. The data from the state parks were provided by the Public Information Office of the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation. Additionally, the search query data was collected from Google Trends. Two locations within the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina were selected due to the exclusivity of the locations and to capture visit behavior in search queries. Those locations are Mount Mitchell State Park and Grandfather Mountain State Park.