Tourism And Migration

It is crucial to understand how migration influences tourism development (Gamage and King, 1999; Feng and Page, 2000; William and Hall, 2000; Butler, 2003; O’Reilly, 2003). There is limited information on the relationship between migration and tourism especially in the Sub Saharan Region. Therefore, the results produced from the study will contribute vastly to the relationship between tourism and migration in the Southern region of Africa through Visiting Friends and Relative travel. The link between tourism and migration can be traced back to the period of Grand Tour where aristocracy visits from Northern to Southern Europe. This influenced destination to provide goods and services that promotes tourism though migration (William and Hall,

Furthermore, the link between migration and VFR travel is as a result of the connection via communication and information technology and how the latest media has contributed to the shaping of the physical relationships (Palovic et al., 2014). VFR travel links with migration in the sense that when people move to a new area they might be inspired to explore, visit places of interest which evoke a sense of feeling and quality, thus forming a relationship between immigrant host and their new environment (Griffin, 2014). It is argued that tourism contributes to other types of migration, labour migration for provision of services to the tourist, consumption-related migration through second home ownership and retirement migration (Feng and Page, 2000). Seetaram and Dwyer (2009) pointed out reasons that influence the development of tourism through migration. The reasons include permanent migration in which the immigrant communicates with friends and relatives and possible informing them about the attractions hence influencing them to visit (William and Hall, 2000; Seetaram and Dwyer, 2009). On the other hand, these permanent immigrants when they visit their home countries, they might want to connect with their past thus promoting tourism through tourism (William and Hall, 2000; Seetaram and Dwyer,

For example, China in 1976 introduced the ‘open door’ policy which led to the influx of migrants into the country which brought economic development of $8 million of remittance by 1994. Once immigrants settle in a country they adopt certain domestic activity so as to have a sense of belonging, have knowledge concerning their new country for example, in New Zealand is largely populated by immigrants (Fend and Page, 2000)

From the above discussion, it is evidenced that tourism and migration have a relationship and it is permanent migration that influences the development of regional tourists. However this relationship is not thoroughly discussed in tourism literature especially developing countries hence this study is conducted to show the link between tourism and migration with reference to Zimbabweans travelling between South Africa and Zimbabwe for visiting friends and relatives purposes. Undocumented immigrants (Crush et al.,