Modelling foreign tourists in Switzerland

The agent-based transport model SIMBA MOBi is applied by Swiss Federal Railways to plan future rail infrastructure, timetables, and service concepts. It reacts to changes in demographics (ageing, migration, household location), transport supply, and policy. We present an extension to model tourist behaviour. It should

1. react to a change in tourist accommodation (e.g., a new hotel), in tourist attractions (e.g., a new museum) and in the tourist population (e.g., a change in the countries of origin of tourists in Switzerland) and
2. enable a more accurate analysis of foreign tourists in train stations.

The model is built in three steps.

• First, we generate agents, each with a country of origin and a tourist accommodation (hotels and supplementary accommodations such as holiday homes, collective accommodation and campsites). This part is based on data from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (overnight stays in 2019) and Openstreetmap (location of accommodation as of today).
• Second, we generate a main transport mode for each agent. The estimation of the choice model is based on data from the Tourism Monitoring Switzerland 2017.
• Third, we generate activity plans for the agents and define a destination choice model.