UK as a tourism generating region, analyse on UK residents behaviour regarding what influence their choice of destination.
“Tourists are people who travel to and stay in places outside their usual environment” (UNWTO 1995)
Indeed, tourists make a choice when decided to go on holiday, their motivations in leaving their traditional environment create demand in tourism and this phenomena has been going on for many years, changing a lot in the last decades, with tourism becoming a big part of our lives. The explanation behind motivation and behaviour which motivate tourists to travel are complex and influence by many factors.
Tourism is one of the leading components of world trade, accounting for about 6 percent of world exports of goods and services. That is why it is important to understand and evaluate it. Where tourists go, why, what is the trend, can it changed?
This paper will take a look at the performance of UK as a tourism generating region then will analyse the behaviour of UK residents towards tourism in concordance on demand and motivation factors and will draw suggestions on how this aspects are influencing the choice of destination.
In order to appreciate what enable UK residents to become tourist, it is important to understand what does UK as a generating tourism region means: a tourist-generating zone is a region where tourists live and work and also from and to they travel for different raisons. (Visit of friend and relative, leisure, business) Tourist-receiving zone is a region which people visit for business or leisure purposes or to visit friends and relatives. It is also possible for a zone to be both a generating and receiving area. A good example could be the capital, indeed Londoners take vacations within the UK and across the world, and at the same time, million people visit the town each year. According to visit Britain the first four month of 2012 saw more than 9 million visitors