ABSTRACT

D. Hall and S. J. Page state that ‘an understanding of tourism demand is a starting point for the analysis of why tourism develops, who patronizes specific destinations and what appeals to the client market’. Extrinsic factors or determinants, such as government policy, media communications, marketing, societal norms and pressures, knowledge, information on and images of destinations, technological change and wider socio-economic determinants have an equally important role to play in shaping tourism destination demand. It is suggested that suppressed demand can be subdivided into ‘potential’ and ‘deferred’ demand. Economic determinants, social determinants and political determinants act as significant constraining variables on individuals within a tourist-generating region. The availability of the necessary finance is perhaps the most obvious variable influencing tourism demand. At a global scale, many of the mature tourism markets in North America and Europe have seen relatively slow growth in international arrivals, with niche markets offering much of the expansion (e.g. the youth travel market and backpacking).