The Demand

for Tourism:
Concepts and
Definitions
Tourist Demand (Mathieson and Wall, 1982)
The total number of persons who travel, or wish to travel, to use tourist facilities and services at
places away from their places of work and residence.
Demand for Tourism:
‘effective’ and ’suppressed’

• Effective or Actual Demand

comprises the actual numbers of
participants in tourism.
Demand for Tourism:
‘effective’ and ’suppressed’

Suppressed Demand is made up of

that section of the population who
does not travel for some reason.
• Potential Demand refers to
those who will travel at some
future date if they experience
a change in circumstances.
For example, their purchasing
power may increase.
• Deferred Demand is a
demand postponed because
of a problem in the supply
environment, such as the
disruption to Nepal’s trekking
industry caused by the
earthquake in 2015.
 A society’s level of economic development is a major
determinant of tourist demand because the economy
Economic Factors influences so many critical, and interrelated, factors.

• The Nature of Employment changes

• The ‘Emerging Market’ stage of development is
reached.
• Government investment in infrastructure and high
penetration of technology.
• The population is healthier
• Improving educational standards
 • Clearly, tourism is a result of
industrialization and, quite
simply, the more highly
developed an economy, the
greater the levels of tourist
demand, as shown by India’s
growing outbound tourism
activity.
• Effectively this mean that
more countries are joining
the ‘Premier League’ of
destinations that attract over
one million arrivals each
year, thereby increasing the
Economic Factors: worldwide competition

Conclusion
 • Levels of population growth, distribution and density
Population affect travel propensity.
• Population growth can be closely linked to stage of
Factors economic development by considering the demographic
transition, where population growth is seen in terms of
four connected phases.
Population Factors • High Stationary Phase
– high birth rate and death
rates
• Early Expanding Phase
– high birth rates but a fall
in death rates
• Late Expanding Phase
– fall in the birth rate
• Low Stationary Phase
- birth and death rates have
stabilized to a low level
 Political Influences

Political affect travel propensities

in a number of ways:

• Political Complexion
• Political Groupings
• Deregulation
• Political Instability
The Personal View

• Two sets of personal factors influence travel

propensity and therefore act to condition
access to tourism.
• Lifestyle
• Income
• Employment
• Holiday Entitlement
• Educational Attainment
• Mobility
• Life Cycle
• Age
• Domestic Circumstances
Lifestyle Determinants:
Income

Tourism is a luxury, an expensive

activity that demands a certain
threshold of income before an
individual can choose to take part.
• Gross Income – total amount
earned
• Disposable Income - money that
reaches people, to use as they
see fit
• Discretionary Income – the most
useful measure of the ability to
participate in tourism.
Lifestyle Determinants:
Employment

• The nature of employment not only

influences travel propensity by
determining income and holiday
entitlement, but also has an effect
upon the type of holiday
demanded.
• Fundamental distinction between
those in employment and those
unemployed.
• Job insecurity leading to:
• Later Booking Trips
• More Domestic and VFR
Holidays
• Shorter Lengths of Stay
• Lower Spending Levels
Lifestyle Determinants:
Paid Holiday Entitlement

Low levels of entitlement do act as a real

constraint upon the ability to travel, while
a high entitlement encourages travel. This
is in part due to the inter-relationship
between entitlement and factors such as
job status, income and mobility.
Lifestyle Determinants:
Social Status & Choice of Lifestyle
In pre-industrial and industrial societies an
individual’s social class or socio-economic
group largely determined their use of leisure.
Lifestyle Determinants:
Other Personal Factors

• Level of Educational Attainment

• Awareness and susceptibility of information, the
media, advertising, and sales promotion
• Ability to utilize technology and access to the
internet
• Personal Mobility
• Usually expressed as car ownership
Life Cycle
Determinants
• The propensity of travel, and indeed the
type of tourism experience demanded, is
closely related to an individual’s age.

• Adolescence /Young Adult - High

propensity to travel
• Marriage
• Retirement
Personality Factor
No two individuals are alike and differences in attitudes,
perceptions, and motivation have an important influence on travel
decisions.
Personality Factor
• As perceptions will be influential in making the decision to travel, it is important for planners and managers in tourist
destinations to foster favorable ‘images’ of their locations in the public’s mind.
• Travel Motivators – the inner urges, which initiate travel demand
• It is important to understand these motivators as they help explain why some destinations fall in and out of fashion.
Classification of Travel Motivators:
• WANDERLUST is simply curiosity to experience the strange and unfamiliar
• SUNLUST can be literally translated as the desire for sunshine and a better climate
 • The Organized Mass Tourist - Low on
adventurousness
Cohen’s Classification • The Individual Mass Tourist - Similar to the above but
more flexibility and scope for personal choice is built-
of Tourists in.
• The Explorer - The trip is organized independently
and is looking to get off the beaten track.
• The Drifter - All connections with the tourism
industry are spurned and the trip attempts to get
as far from home and familiarity as possible.
Cohen’s Classification of
Tourists
• Institutionalized Tourism
Dealt with routinely by the
tourism industry - tour
operators, travel agents,
hoteliers and transport
operators.
• Non-Institutionalized Tourism
Individual travel, shunning
contact with the tourism
industry except where
absolutely necessary.
 • The end of the Second World War
represented the beginning of a
remarkable period of growth for
international tourism, with an
annual average growth rate
approaching 7% for the second half
of the twentieth century.
• Until the early years of the 21st
century, international tourism was
The Pattern of remarkably resilient to factors that
Tourism might have been expected to
depress growth: Recession, Oil
Demand Crises, Wars and Terrorism
The
Demand
for Tourism