Poor cousins no more: valuing the development potential of domestic and diaspora tourism

Abstract

In many countries there is an insidious perception that domestic tourism is the ‘poorcousin’ of the more glamorous international tourism market. Yet domestic tourism constitutes the vast majority of tourist flows world wide, and there has been significant growth within Third World countries in particular coinciding with an increase in numbers of middle-income earners. Simultaneously there has been a tendency to take for granted return visits by overseas-based nationals, the diaspora. Using a case study of Samoa, where the development of basic beach huts has provided a low-cost vacation option for both local and overseas-based Samoan tourists, this article demonstrates how domestic tourism can have significant economic, socio-cultural and political benefits. As such, domestic and diaspora tourism deserve more serious consideration than they have been granted by most governments and by tourism and development researchers to date.