Tourism is generally seen as a main source for conveying clients to hotels. Likewise it consider a financial advancement tool for the local community, giving components that may enhance the personal satisfaction, such as, employment and new hotels chain openings, revenues, outlets, convenience administrations, natural and environmental attractions, and celebrations [1-3].

According to hospitality industry expertise’s at Egypt independent [4], internal tourism has had a positive impact, it has also had a negative impact, given some of the Egyptians’ erroneous behavior, which was witnessed by the beaches of Sharm El-Sheikh when thousands of citizens came to it as soon as companies, hotels and resorts offered offers at attractive prices supported by the Ministry of Youth and sports. However, internal tourism has distorted the city of Sharm El- Sheikh, which was one of the most important tourist destinations for the majority of tourists from Europe and the Arab countries.

Political issues are not only the reason for the decline of international tourism but also the negative behavior of domestic tourists that is contrary to the decent tourist appearance. It became customary to watch some inappropriate behavior of some visitors to Sharm El-Sheikh from internal tourists that harms this large tourist city such as, they do not abide by any rules of tourism such as the preservation of the environment and cleanliness and work not to cause any inconvenience to others. This gives a much-uncivilized image to encourage tourists to come to Egypt again.

This negative behavior pushed many of stakeholders in the city of Sharm el-Sheikh to request to stop the campaign, which calls for encouraging internal tourism Sharm El-Sheikh, led by the Ministry of Tourism, which posed after the crisis of the Russian plane.

This study aimed to address the challenges faced five star hotels from domestic tourists during the tourism recession. The aim of highlighting these challenges is not to highlight the negative side, but to identify the problems faced hotels operation from promoting domestic tourism and therefore the possibility of developing a vision and create awareness to solve this crisis, which negatively affect the improvement of the worldwide image of tourism in Egypt.

Tourism linkage to those enterprises that provide accommodation and food and beverage service, transportation and different administrations “for visitors who begin from outside the destination for a period more than 24 hours and less than one year” [5]. The visitors are frequently known as tourists, Visitors who spend under 24 hours in the destination are ‘same-day guests’ [6]. “Tourists can be subdivided into two kinds. Domestic tourists who live inside the country; international tourists who comes from another country” [6].

Domestic tourists encourage lodgings to offset the absence of international tourist and some lost of the room nights caused by the decline of international tourists. On the other hand, there is negative impacts influenced hospitality industry from prompting domestic tourism. As showed by Postma, 2013, the effects of domestic tourists are for the most part positive, it can have negative effect experience the hospitality industry, including misbehavior of visitors toward staff, hotel resources, and environment, seasonality and increase of staff turnover, and finally increase of hotel prices.

Andereck and Vogt [7] stated that, once the hospitality industry turned its target to concentrate on domestic tourists instead of international tourists, many of negative impacts can be happened. These impacts included low of products quality, increase of expenses, increased cost of maintenance, and changes in the hotels strategy [2]. Consequently, the significance of exploring the effects of domestic tourism on the hospitality industry cannot be overestimated [8].

A study by Morupisi and Mokgalo [9] concerned by stakeholders’ perceptions from domestic tourists’ affirmed that the culture of the local people is one obstacle that needs to be overcome. The study sought that domestic market in absence of culture awareness may include many of challenges that need to be addressed for progress to be realized.

A report by Egypt independent reported that hotels stakeholders’ requested from Egypt’s government and the Egyptian Competition Authority (ECA) help to stop a current pattern of business endeavor firms promoting winter season excursion ventures at especially low costs, that don’t reproduce the outings’ genuine cost. Stakeholders’ cautioned against the developing pattern, which they contend may lessen incomes and debilitate the tourism business over the long run.

The report suggested that the ideal approach to raise hotel prices is to build government’s support for the hospitality and tourism sectors. Prices should not be obligatory estimating by the legislature, recommending that prices be dictated by free market activity.

Morupisi and Mokgalo [9] explained that Moving concentration from international tourism to local tourism is a typical measure. Nonetheless, an expansion in domestic tourism does not normally balance the losses acquired by a decrease in international tourists, as they have a tendency to spend significantly more than domestic tourists.

According to a report by business news for construction [10], occupancy and RevPar for international tourism are decreased in Sham El-Shikh and Hurgada in 2016 rather than Cairo and Alexandria due to political instability and increase of domestic tourists as a result of the sharp decline in hotel prices and encouragement of the government and the concerned parties to domestic tourism and neglect of international tourism. Figure 1 shown Occupancy and RevPAR (in USD) for Four Major Cities in Egypt (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Occupancy and RevPAR (in USD) for Four Major Cities in Egypt.

This study includes four hypotheses, which were developed from Postma, 2013 to define the path and direction of the current study, as well as to give a proper conclusion. Figure 2 shows the summary of hypothesis used in this study (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Research Framework.

The main purpose of this study is to address the challenges faced five-star hotels from domestic tourists during the tourism recession. The aim of highlighting these challenges is not to highlight the negative side, but to identify the problems faced hotels operation from promoting domestic tourism and therefore the possibility of developing a vision and create awareness to solve this crisis, which negatively affect the improvement of the worldwide reputation of tourism in Egypt. For this purpose, structured interviews of hotel managers were conducted in five star hotels in Sharm El-sheikh.

The research question in this study built based on the challenges facing the hospitality industry in resorts distention’s after replacing of inbound tourism with domestic tourism. Thus, the question formulation is “Have the domestic tourism influences negatively on the five-star hotels in Sharm El-Sheikh in light of the economic conditions and decline of international tourism?”

The sampling frame in this study consists of hotel managers and directors’ of operations who are managed these hotels in this area. Random sample technique of 219 managers, who accepted to participate, formed the sample of the survey.

A questionnaire survey consist of 5 dimensions with 25 variables adapted from Postma [11] were formulated according to the chosen constructs with an aim to test the impact of domestic tourism on fivestar hotels in Sharm El-Sheikh during the recession period and decline of Inbound tourism. Table 1 shown a questionnaire dimensions include managers’ perception and the impact of domestic tourists as the follows:

Table 1: Dimensions of the study.

All questionnaire items employed a five point Likert-type scale with 1 being “strongly disagree” and 5 being “strongly agree”. To aid in the interpretation of these scales, the researcher established an interpretive scale for the results as follows: “4.5 or greater=Strongly Agree; 4.49-3.50=Agree; 3.49-2.51=Neither Agree nor Disagree; 2.5-1.51=Disagree; and 1.50 or less=Strongly Disagree”. After the formation of the questionnaire collected, a small number of experts (mainly academics and hotel managers) were asked for their opinions on suitability of the questions. Respondents did not have any difficulty in understanding the questions, indicating the sheer validity of the questionnaire [12].

Data analysis

After collecting data, they were coded and entered into Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24. Then, Mean and standard deviation using descriptive statistics, and so a standard multiple regression was implemented to examine study’s hypotheses. Furthermore, Cronbach’s alpha analysis was used to assess questionnaire’s scales reliability; results of this analysis confirmed that all questionnaire’s scales were internally consistent with Cronbach’s alpha >0.7 which is considered to be a good value [13].

Reliability is a measure of how much research instruments yield reliable outcomes after rehashed trials. It is essentially how much test scores are free from estimation of errors [12,14]. Therefore, the reliability of this portion of the instrument had to be determined. A pilot test of the questionnaire was administered to fifteen managers that were not part of the frame for this study. This group of respondents was instructed to respond to questionnaire items and indicate their concerns regarding any of the items. In addition, data were analyzed to measure the reliability of the instrument. Input from the pilot study indicated that questionnaire was clear and easy to follow.

Table 2 shown A Cronbach’s alpha of .727 was found from the pilot test, indicating that the instrument was reliable with a high degree of internal consistency. Because of these positive results, no modifications were made to the instrument.

Table 2: Reliability Statistics.

Descriptive analysis

To measure the impact from domestic tourism on the five star hotels in Egypt, descriptive statistic analysis was used. Surveys consist of 25 variables reflecting the perceived impacts of domestic tourism.

All questionnaire items employed a five point Likert-type scale with 1 being “strongly disagree” and 5 being “strongly agree”. To aid in the interpretation of these scales, the researchers have established an interpretive scale for the results as follows: “4.5 or greater=Strongly Agree; 4.49-3.50=Agree; 3.49-2.51=Neither Agree nor Disagree; 2.5-1.51=Disagree; and 1.50 or less=Strongly Disagree”. Table 3 shows the mean and standard deviation for each dimension.

Table 3: Descriptive analysis.

As shown in Table 3 there is an overall moderate tendency (item scores between 3.50 and 4.49) for hotel managers to consider aspects of the impact of domestic tourism: Price reduction (M=3.57), new Investment (M=3.66), turnover and hiring freeze (M=3.58), and inadequate attitude and behavior (M=3.90).

These results indicate that, marketing orientation towards domestic tourism as an alternative to long-term international tourism during period of recession has both positive and negative aspects. These negative aspects appear in the five-star hotels, which have been forced to reduce prices strongly to match the economic situation of the Egyptian market, especially as most local tourists are not aware for this type of tourism. Thus, these negative aspects emerged in the form of in rooms’ rate and services, leakages of employees and increase of turnover rate, inadequate attitude, and behavior towards staff, assets of organizations, and environment. Lastly, Hotels companies decided to avoid or postpone any new investments in the sector with potentially detrimental effects on service quality as a result of the gradual degradation in the existing tourism infrastructure. However, in each group of the impact from Domestic Tourism, some aspects gained the highest agreement.

Among Price reduction dimension, aspects related to decrease of rooms rate and service (M=4.34, SD=0.62), Hotels decided to raise their prices to target a specific category during the peak season (M=3.98, SD=1.15). While in the hotels Investment group dimension, aspects of Hotels companies decided to avoid any new in-vestments (M=4.45, SD=.73) and Economic crisis pushed many companies and organizations to shut down and lay off employees (M=4.39, SD=0.50).

A third dimension which explain the employment situation, the highest scores of agreement achieved were in the aspects, Increase of staff turnover rate (M=4.34, SD=.79), absence of skilled workers in this sector decreased the opportunity to attract customers in high quality segments (M=4.02, SD=1.03), and The impact of the recession on employment distribution can be observed in terms of the educational level of employees in the sector (M=4.00, SD=1.12).

The last dimension of the impact of domestic tourism was the inadequate attitude and behavior of guests toward staff, hotel assets, and environment. The highest scores noticed in two aspects were Domestic tourism negatively affect the perceived value of the destination, making recovery more difficult when things improve (M=4.32, SD=0.95), and Negative attitude and behavior from Domestic tourists toward the environment and hotel policies (M=4.08, SD=1.01).

A fifth dimension which, was descriptively analyzed within this study, is the Negative perceptions of the hospitality stakeholders concerning the domestic tourism. As presented in Table 3, managers were moderately unsatisfied with the whole perception from Domestic Tourism (M=3.53); particularly, there were two main unsatisfactory aspects in their perception: Domestic tourism influenced Hotel chains more than independent hotels (M=4.13, SD=0.96) and Domestic tourism expenditure has not outpaced international spending (M=3.11, SD=1.38).

Table 4 shows the overall means and standard deviations of the research variables. It shows that inadequate attitude and behavior was the first reason behind the Negative perceptions of the hospitality stakeholders concerning the domestic tourism (mean 3.900) and the most important evaluation item, then Postpone of New Investment (mean 3.66), turnover rand Hiring freeze (mean 3.58) and Price reduction (mean 3.57).

Table 4: Overall mean.

This result is consistent with previous studies [15-17] that lacks of planning and coordination for domestic tourism, may led to several negative and undesirable economic, social, environmental and cultural impacts and consequently to reduce of prices and devaluation of investments.

Hypotheses testing

This study aimed to investigate relationships among five major constructs: Negative perceptions of the hospitality stakeholders concerning the domestic tourism (dependant variable), hotel Price reduction aspects (independent variable), inadequate attitude, and behavior aspects (independent variable), turnover rand Hiring freeze aspects (independent variable), and postpone of new Investment aspects (independent variable). To achieve these investigations, four hypotheses were developed and examined. The four hypotheses of the current study’s model were built to examine the predictability of hotel managers’ perceptions of Domestic Tourism aspects to their over-all impact. These four hypotheses were tested using standard multiple regression analysis. Results of this analysis are shown in Table 5.

Table 5: Dependent Variable: Negative perceptions of the hospitality.

The statistical findings presented in Table 5 reveal that the study’s model significantly predict the level of perceptions of hotel managers in Sharm El-shikh hotels. It was able to explain 28.5% (p ≤ 0.0001) of the variance in managers’ satisfaction. These results reject hypotheses 2 and support hypotheses 1, 3, and 4. The main results of the regression model clearly show significant effect of hotel Price reduction aspects, inadequate attitude and behavior aspects, and turnover and Hiring freeze aspects on hotel managers’ perceptions.

In addition, the results indicate that all the study’s model constructs make a statistically significant contribution to the explanation of variance of managers’ satisfaction. Thus, regression equation would be: managers perceptions=3.861+ .317* Price reduction + 0. .246* turnover rand Hiring freeze+.199* inadequate attitude and behavior.

These results explain that for every additional point achieved on Price reduction, we can interpret that the negative perceptions from domestic tourism increases by 0.317, for every additional point achieved on inadequate attitude and behavior, the negative perceptions from domestic tourism increases by 0. 199, while for every additional score on turnover rand Hiring freeze the negative perceptions from domestic tourism increase by 0.246.

Among these variables, Price reduction aspects make the largest contribution compare the relative importance of each independent variable in standardized terms ( Beta=0.311, P ≤ 0.0001). It participates in a unique contribution of the total regression explanation with a par correlation equals 33.1% of the variance in total managers’ dissatisfaction levels. This followed by beta weight contribution turnover rand Hiring freeze (Beta=0.213, P ≤ 0.0001) and inadequate attitude and behavior ( Beta=0.212, P ≤ 0.0001).

Accordingly, the most important issue here is the result that Price reduction aspects of hotel chain have higher effect on managers’ perceptions than turnover rand Hiring freeze and inadequate attitude and behavior aspects.

Table 5 also explains the multicollinearity in the multiple linear regression models. The results indicate that all independent variables are correlated with each other. Tolerance is greater than 0.1 (or VIF<10) for all variables.

Lastly, Figure 3 shown the homoscedasticity and normality of residuals with an eyeball test of the Q-Q Plot of z*pred and z*presid. The plot indicates that the multiple linear regression analysis there is no tendency in the error terms.

Figure 3: Normal P-Plot of Regression standardized Residual Depeandent variable: exe.

In accordance with the findings of Postma, 2013 studied domestic’ experiences with tourism in four tourism destinations. He identified three categories of so-called “critical encounters”, four levels of annoyance, four levels on tolerance, and three levels of loyalty towards tourism development. In addition domestics should be both the starting point and the checkpoint for tourism policy and planning [11,18-20]. As the negative perception of tourism effects the way in which residents perceive their quality of community life. Moreover, Stephen [21,22] added: “The behavior patterns of visitors often divert from their socio-cultural norms and do not accurately represent the host societies from which they originate, with conspicuous increases in levels of expenditure and consumption, or adoption of activities that might be on the margins of social acceptability at home (e.g., drinking, overeating, gambling, atypical dress codes, nudity, semi nudity)”.

Thus, the current study’s findings are supported with previous studies’ findings; especially, in relation to the importance of pricing strategy, human recourses, and the guests attitude and behavior toward the staff, assets and environment.

This study analyzed hotel managers perceptions and its association with impact of domestic tourism aspects among a group of managers in a five star hotel in Sharm El-Shikh during economic recession. A few organizations may neglect to manage their essence in the commercial center or they are compelled to briefly or for all time shut down. This has happened and yet occurring in the urban areas of Hurghada and Sharm El Sheik particularly after the revolution of January 25^th, 2011. That was not only the situation, in November 2015, there was the Russian plane crash, which drastically influenced inhabitance rate and ruined worldwide inbound from coming to Egypt. Promoting domestic tourism has a positive and negative side. These negative aspects need to be combined by hospitality stakeholders and the government. In addition to reconsidering the strategy of supporting domestic tourism and unifying trends to overcome these obstacles facing hotels. Taking into account the spread of domestic tourism culture need the clarification and standardization of hotel policies for domestic guests.

Thus, the results of the current study are of great importance in the field of hospitality industry by evaluating actual managers’ perceptions through addressing four dimensions of the most important impact of domestic tourism. Consequently, this study is differentiated from previous ones in two manners: firstly, it is a field research, which followed social realism philosophy to interpret actual managers’ perceptions by analyzing of various aspects of domestic tourism. Secondly, this study concentrated on the negative side of domestic tourism for the hospitality industry, rather than the previous studies, which concentrated on the positive side only. The study also was considered the challenges faced the five-star hotels through addressing a real dimensions experienced hotels during the recession period.

Change the trend from international tourism to domestic tourism is a common measure during the recession. However, going towards domestic tourism as an alternative to international tourism is not a solution and will not compensate for the huge hotel losses caused by a decline of international tourism, as they tend to spend much more than domestic tourists.

The study sought the views and perceptions of the tourism stakeholders about the domestic tourism situation in Botswana.

All the respondents affirmed that the state of the domestic market is not where it should and there are challenges that need to be addressed for progress to be realized. The culture of the local people is one stumbling block that needs to be overcome. During the security misperceptions, governments and hotel companies can incentivize international tourism demand by determine prices according the services and products offered.

Hotels companies can also shift focus from traditional tourist segments to new segments that are less influenced by the impact of political circumstances. This includes Chinese and Korean tourists who have a more realistic, less exaggerated view of the severity of the political situation in resorts, and more price-sensitive.

Hospitality Stakeholders perceptions can be comprehended as an assessment of the real hospitality supply about their guests experience. This study, investigated the hospitality Stakeholders perceptions differences about the challenges faced the hospitality industry from local guests.

The results of the current study show that the hotel managers perceptions of, and impacts towards, domestic tourism in Sharm Elsikh, Egypt were negative. The negative perceptions and impacts portrayed could be evidence of a lack of culture awareness, and policy, which are considered an overall goal of hospitality tourism development. In addition, the results could raise concerns in relation to the well-being of the domestic tourists in Sharm Elsikh, Egypt, for the domestics are considered to be crucial stakeholders in tourism development.

The present study, is a key issues to emanate from the results have been identified as being: (1) Price reduction; (2) turnover and Hiring freeze; and (3) inadequate attitude and behavior. All the above issues have influenced the perceptions and attitudes of the respondents.