Journal of Environment and Earth Science www.iiste.org ISSN 2224-3216 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0948 (Online) Vol 2, No.2, 2012 24 Forecasting as a Pinnacle for Rural Revitalization: Case Study of Mesowalai Homestay, Sabah State, Malaysia Ojo Kayode Ayobami, Hairul Nizam Bin Ismail and Stephen Enyinaya Eluwa Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Teknologi, 81310 Skudai, Malaysia.*blessfriend112@yahoo.com,+60103906838 Abstract The rapid increase in the capacity of computers to store information has generated an abundance of data across all types of industries in the world. Tourism forecast generates thousands of series of data nearly every time when considering domestic travel, as well as numerous levels of disaggregation such as geographical regions, purpose of travel and so on. Hence, accurate forecasting techniques have become a necessity in Mesowalai Homestay due to the influx of tourists to the area & its impact on socio- economic development so as to take advantage of such a plethora of information. Many studies have used different forecasting techniques to forecast tourist arrival; therefore this study adopts the regression approach to forecast tourist arrivals in Mesowalai homestay. The data comprises of tourist arrival from the year 2000 to 2010. For the modeling, year 2000 to 2006 was used for building up the tourist arrival model and year 2006 to 2010 was used to compare the forecast. The result shows that the peak tourist arrivals to Mesowalai homestay is put at 1123.55 annually while tourist growth increases by 233.2 annually. Keywords: Volunteer tourism, Forecast, Regression Approach, Tourist Arrival, Homestay 1. Introduction Tourism has become the largest global industry (Goeldner & Ritchie, 2006, Choi & Sirakaya 2006) and the growth of this industry in the 20th century has been credited to the “globalization of capitalism, movement of populations, tourist’s arrival, advancement in transportation and modern communication technology. In 2010, the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) projected that the travel and tourism industry would generate a total of $5,474 billion toward global gross domestic product and 219,810,000 jobs. Many communities have experienced dwindling traditional industries as a result of rural urban drift and have increasingly looked towards tourism to help fill the growing economic void (Latkova, 2008; Perdue, Long, & Allen, 1987). The travel and tourism industry has the potential to offer many benefits to these communities which include improvement in the quality of life in a host community by increasing employment opportunities, tax revenues, economic diversity, festivals, restaurants, cultural activities, and outdoor recreation opportunities (Andereck, et al., 2005). Andereck, et al., (2005) noted that tourism also has some negative impacts to the host community, such as increased crowding, traffic, crime, cost of living, parking problems, friction between residents and tourists, and changes in residents’ way of life. To arrest these ugly situation , voluntourism can serve as an alternative form of tourism that aims at limiting these negative impacts while obtaining the benefits the tourism industry has to offer (Wearing,2002; Stebbins & Graham ,2004;Stoddart&Rogerson, 2004). The Residents support of tourism has also been identified as an essential element for successful sustainable tourism development (Jurowski & Gursoy, 2004; Latkova, 2008, Awangku, 2009) and the establishment of home stay in Batu Puteh in Sabah State (Hamzah, 1986) is a good yardstick to venture into forecasting of tourist’s arrival. Homestay is a place where travelers can stay and live with a local host in their family home. Homestays in Sabah provide a unique opportunity to experience the way of life of local people of an area along with their indigenous and traditional cultures. They also provide an opportunity for visitors to experience a place in an authentic, comfortable and homely setting. Homestays are not merely a place of accommodation for travelers such as a hotel, and should not be confused with "Bed and Breakfast", "Inns" or "Lodging Houses" because it is a place that usually seek to ameliorate the rural menace through the development of viable resilient sustainable diversified local economy, improve the quality of life of the area by building the community capacity to adapt to and benefit from global economic change. In a related vein, (rural revitalization) focuses on the stimulation of