Tourism: Is Future Demand Changing?

Abstract

In the context of this chapter, international tourism is defined as being movements of tourists between countries involving the crossing of a national frontier. Purpose of travel follows the standard United Nations definition of being for leisure or business reasons. Although ‘tourism’ and ‘tourists’ are usually used in a general sense, both words disguise a wide variation in purpose of travel and also in the type of person travelling; the three broad categories of ‘holiday-makers’, ‘business travellers’, and ‘other travellers’ each contain market segments and wider profiles which are often very different from each other. In considering the future development of international tourism, both the travel industry and tourist-receiving countries should be concerned to identify those factors which are likely to influence the volume and direction of future demand.