APPRAISAL OF TOURISM HABITS OF ACADEMIC STAFF

The research aims at determining the factors that influence tourism travels by academic staff of selected universities with a view of identifying the constraining factors that hinders their tourism habits and making suitable recommendation to encourage participations in leisure tourism. A structured questionnaire was designed and validated and administered through cluster sampling procedure. The review of literature was made on the determinant of tourism and its related activities. The result of the analyzed data provided by the respondent revealed that academic staff were more involved in work related tripsthan leisure trips. It also revealed that academic rank has a significant influence on the frequency of travels by academic staff the study concluded with recommendation for improvement in tourism participation.

The World Tourism Organisation defines tourism as “the activities of persons traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leissure, business and other purposes.” This broad definition of tourism is then broken down into six categories according to the purpose of the trip: Leisure, recreation and holidays; Visiting friends and relatives: Business and professional activities; Health treatment; Religious and pilgrimages. Those that engage in tourism – i.e. tourists can also be divided into international tourists and domestic tourists and into overnight tourists and same-day visitors.

The individual tourist is believed to be influenced by the social, cultural or nationality groups that they belong to. Thus the collective value, taste, lifestyle, and characteristics of social, national or cultural groups are interpreted as instrumental in molding individual tourist’s behavior and taste in some structured manner. (Butler, 1991); and (Holloway and Plant, 1998), suggests that there is a strong tendency for individuals to conform to the norms and values of social groups (peers, students, workmates, friends, neighbors and relations) cultural, national or regional groups in their aggregate patterns of demand for tourism products. Also, tourists’ habits and participation pattern is a function of available resources; that is destination product supply tends to influence tourist’s pattern.