The Role of Psychology in Tourism Industry

Abstract

Present study aimed to measure the role of psychology science in tourism industry development. Tourism industry in Indonesia began to advance rapidly, indicated by increasing tourists’ number over past recent years as mentioned by national Central Bureau of Statistics. In 2009 and 2010 were 5,053,469 and 6,235,606, respectively, increased for more than a million people, and in 2011 were 6,750,416. Spilane defined tourism as doing temporary trip activity between particular places, by an individual or group, in order to seek balance with environment on social, culture, nature and science aspects. Starting point to understand tourism is to apprehend behavior, wherein tourism behavior is among behavior explained by Psychology science. Psychology able to explain what factors encourage particular behavior and what behavior emerge related to tourism. Thus, through understanding concepts underlying behavior, development strategy of tourism industry could be determined.