ABSTRACT

Destinations are normally very keen to attract international visitors, both for economic and political prestige reasons. Domestic travel is often seen as not being as ‘glamorous’ as inbound tourism and politicians tend to talk more about the numbers of international tourists to their countries and the economic benefi ts they generate. The rationale for this is rather simple; international tourists inject ‘new money’ into a country’s economy; domestic tourists just ‘recycle’ money within the country’s economy. This argument tends to be quite unfair to domestic tourism, as it has major benefi cial impacts on various regions within countries. However, from a macro perspective, there is truth to this argument (see VisitBritain quote below).