Influence of Push and Pull Travel Motivational Factors on International Tourists Re-Visit Intention to Gall in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Tourism plays a dominant role in Sri Lanka and tourism industry consider as a major foreign currency earner in the economy. Hence, International tourists perform most prominence role in the country. However, as compared with the other South East Asian region, Sri Lanka not yet tapped into its full potential in the global market. Hence, tourism industry should pay more attention to explore the reasons why people travel and what are the motivational factors to travel in order to increase the tourists` arrivals, earnings and global market share. Motivation is one of the main concepts that used to interpret the behavior of an individual`s travel and it is related to the reason why people travel. In tourism research, this motivation concept classified into two forces as push and pull factors, and the main objective of this study was to identify the influence of this push and pull motivational factors on international tourists revisit intention. The sample of 100 international tourists were randomly selected from the Galle tourism zone, which is the most favored tourists` destination in Sri Lanka. Both primary and secondary data were used for this study. According to the results of the descriptive statistics, rest and relaxation were the most important push motivation factor and beautiful natural scenery and landscape were the most important pull motivational factors. Results also revealed that, the international tourists were motivated to visit Galle by its pull factors such as good physical amenities, warm and sunny weather and beautiful natural scenery and landscape.