A Caribbean cruise line booked the number of passengers (in thousands) described below for each quarter from 2001 through 2005.
a. Combining the quarterly bookings for each year, fit a linear trend equation and forecast the number of bookings for 2009.
b. Determine the seasonal indexes and break the 2009 forecast in part (a) into its quarterly components.
c. Combining the quarterly bookings for each year, use exponential smoothing, with α = 0.3, to forecast the number of bookings for 2006.
d. Use the seasonal indexes to break the 2006 forecast in part (c) into its quarterly components.