Tourism is defined by the United Nations World Tourism Organization as travel that involves staying away from normal place of residence for at least one night but not for ever a year in a person’s own country or abroad, with the purpose other than a permanent paid activity at the destination.
There are several reasons why people engage in tourism, but the major reason summarized by Wang is that tourism travel provides the tourist with “an alternative experience of time, i.e [sic] time off or holiday time, which appears as an alternative rhythm, free from the constraints of the daily tempo.” Therefore, tourism processes are geared towards maximizing the lifestyle experience there occurs a possibility of learning and gaining new knowledge and meaning from the process of travel as well as from the places visited.
The importance of tourism is evidenced by the increase in the number of people travelling yearly. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization,698 million people travelled to a foreign country in 2000, representing a 25-fold increase from 1950 when the figure was 25 million. By 2003,some 2 million people crossed an International border each day, compared with only 69,000 in 1950.
According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) about one-fifth of these tourist travel to developing countries such as Zanzibar. It is expected that the number of tourists will increase to 1.56 billion per year by 2020 at the global growth rate of 4.1 percent per annum for the 1995-2020 period.
On other hand, the growth for Africa is estimated to be relatively higher at 5.1 percent per annum.
UNWTO figures outlined in the report show that International arrivals in 2020 dropped by 73 percent from the previous year, precipitating an estimated $ 1.3tn loss in export revenues and threatening up to 120 million direct jobs.
In June 2020 the Government of Zanzibar suspended tourism activities due to the COVID-19 outbreak. According to the Zanzibar office of chief Government Statistician show that from January to June this year, Zanzibar received 188,798 tourists which is the increase of 19,8 percent compared with the same period last year.
Most of visitors were from Europe(79.2 percent) as Russia(36.0 percent) led f
