Description:
This paper examines tourism logistics and promotion by focusing on whether TV programs matter from a domestic tourists’ point of view. Tourism logistics involves providing logistics in the form of delivery of services such as transport to customers by ensuring the movement of tourists from point A to point B. However, there are limited studies that look at age of domestic tourists visiting national parks in relation to promotion via Television (TV) programs. This paper specifically establishes the relationship between age of domestic tourists visiting national parks and knowledge of TV programs. The paper uses both quantitative and qualitative methods. Semi-structured questionnaires were used to obtain quantitative data, and interview guides were deployed to get qualitative data that supplemented the quantitative results. Study area is southern tourist attractions in Southern Tanzania. This study used convenience sampling. Sample size of 400 respondents was subjected to descriptive statistics, Chi-square test. Qualitative face to face interview data from 16 respondents was analysed using content and thematic analyses. Findings showed that there is a statistically significant relationship between age of domestic tourists visiting national parks and knowledge of TV programs. The interview results revealed that in order to improve tourism logistics to national parks for domestic tourism, there is a need for “on the spot transport at entries of national parks” and “availability of tourist information centres” so that domestic tourists have more choices of transports as well as access to information. The domestic tourists’ point of view can assist stakeholders to improve tourism logistics for visits to national parks by ensuring that knowledge of TV programs includes information on location and transport methods to national parks as well as availability of “on the spot transport at entries of national parks” and “tourist information centres” hence contributing to the growth of domestic tourism.