Reflection Paper One

Tourism has become one of the most popular global leisure activities in the past decade. Two factors are considered when choosing a destination; push and pull factors. Both factors contribute to destinations chosen by tourists while push factors concentrate on internal motives, pull factors focus on external motives. It is important for tourism providers to understand tourists’ motives for with this they’re able to work towards and visualize the end destination of the trip.
When a tourist begins to think of vacation, push and pull factors first come in to play. Push factors focus on internal, social-psychological motives which pertain to the individual and how they feel about themselves or the environment. These motives focus on the decision to go on a vacation to experience a change in scenery, or a need to escape from social standards and confinement. After the push is determined, pull factors then focus on the external portion of the vacation such as choosing a place because of the activities, the resort or an event. The tourist is able to evaluate why one location is better than another which ensures the individual to have an idea of what they are looking in the end destination.
Although push and pull work together, push factors are an antecedent to pull factors. Push provides the option in which the individual has a choice to travel or not, without this decision there is no pull. Push factors are internal motives that are unrelated to specific location and it is the idea to travel altogether. In comparison, the pull factor strengthens the push factor with more tangible and external motives which supports the tourist into choosing a specific location. For instance, the pull factor for a trip to Indonesia would be the Muslim community that it is so well known that could help re-discover who you are through religion. The push factor would be completely irrelevant to Indonesia itself in that it would not be about the specific location but the cause for the