CHAPTER ONE

1.0 Introduction

This is a chapter which explained the basis of the study. It explore the background of the problem, statement of the problem, purpose of the study, objectives of the research, questions of the research, hypothesis of the research, scope and significance of the study.

1.1Background to the study Tourism is the one of the fastest growing industries in the world and this is due to the fact that the world has a wealth of natural, cultural and man-made attractions which are untapped from the standpoint of tourism development. There is a significant contribution of promoting domestic tourism to the development of any nation; the Manila Declaration of 1980 stated that: “within each country, domestic tourism contributes to an improved balance of the national economy through a redistribution of the national income. Domestic tourism also heightens the awareness of common interest and contributes to the development of activities favorable to the general economy of the country. For developed countries the following figures have been found: Domestic trips in the EU have been estimated at 510 million per year (Peeters et al. 2007),.The US domestic market is much larger at 1.2 billion domestic trips (WTO 2005). Another report using a broader definition even shows a stable figure of around 2 (!) billion person trips per year for the years 2006 -2012 of which around 25 % for business and 75 % for leisure purposes (Shifflet et al 2008),.Other developed regions add rather small domestic tourist trip numbers, for instance 72 million overnight tourists in Australia in 2005. But if the same-day visitors are included it results in a total of 200 million visitor numbers (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007).The assumption is thus that the remaining developed world (excluding the EU and USA) may account for 250 million domestic tourist trips.