Domestic tourism for sustainable development in developing countries

Abstract

Most scholars portray tourism as a concept foreign to ‘natives’ and brought about by the adventurous, wondrous, and innocent leisure seeking relatively rich foreigner. This popularised conceptualisation of tourism gives the notion of a ‘real’ tourist being someone who is foreign to a particular destination. Indeed, this is contrary to post-modern theorisation that conceptualises tourism as an engagement and experience where a person taking a moment to view different scenes out of their ordinary life are also tourists. This post-modern disposition problematizes the conventional WTO definition of a tourist and provides insights on how natives, with their sense of ownership of tourism resources around them can be capitalised on to achieve sustainable tourism development in many Third World destinations. Using content analysis of literature this paper marshals evidence of existence of a knowledge gap and an opportunity for developing countries to mainstream domestic tourism as a panacea for sustainable tourism development.