East African Regional Integration and Tourism Development in Rwanda: A Case of Rwanda Development Board
Abstract
The scrutiny that regional integration plays a pertinent role in promoting tourism formed the justification of conducting the current study. The objective of this paper was to establish the relationship between regional integration and tourism development. A correlational research design was applied. The target population was 432 from whom a sample of 208 was chosen using purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Structured questionnaire and interview guide were used as data collection tools. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0 was adopted for Data management. The findings revealed an average mean of 4.20 based on effective implementation of regional integration strategies promotion of tourism development in Rwanda like having effective harmonization of policies, single tourist Visa and tourism collective attractiveness. The findings also showed that all in these facilitated the government of Rwanda to get an increased number of visits arrivals that varied from 987,000 in 2015 to 1,700,000 in 2019, number of overnights spent, accommodation capacities and increased tourism revenue that varied from 427million US Dollars in 2015 to 800 million US Dollars in 2019. On the other, the findings established that there is a statistical significance relationship between regional integration and tourism development where harmonization government policies and single tourist visa indicated to be highly correlated as presented by Pearson coefficient of correlation (r = .861 and p-value= .005). The results showed the R Square of .856 which means that tourism can be affected by regional integration by 85.6% and the remaining 14.4% can be explained by other factors. This paper recommended that all partners should cooperate, actively participate in the venture in equal measure and ensure their commitment to common goals.
Keywords: Regional integration, Tourism and Tourism development.
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