Measuring the Impact of a Mega Event on Hotel Accommodation Income in South Africa

In this paper we assess the impact of the 2010 Federation of International Football Association (FIFA) World Cup tournament on the monthly hotel accommodation income. Seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) and the Box-Tao intervention analysis were applied to the data which is from Statistics South Africa is for the period 2005 to 2012. The SARIMA model is fitted to the pre-intervention period that is for the period before the world cup. The intervention model is applied using the pulse and step functions to assess if the impact of the FIFA World Cup was temporary or permanent, respectively. The pulse model has a lower AIC and hence adjudged to be a better fit for the data than the step. Empirical evidence suggest that the 2010 FIFA World Cup has an abrupt and temporary impact on the monthly hotel accommodation income in South Africa for the reviewed period.