Abstract
The literature on tourism often conceptualizes tourist motives in terms of push and pull forces. The idea behind this concept is that people travel because they are pushed by their own internal forces and pulled by external forces of the destination attributes. The objectives of this research were to understand both push and pull motivation for domestic tourism and the relationship between these motivations for Saudi Arabian tourists using data obtained from a survey of 505 respondents. The findings indicated 9 push factors ('cultural value', 'utilitarian', 'knowledge', 'social', 'economical', 'family togetherness', 'interest', 'relaxation', and 'convenience of facilities') and 9 pull factors ('safety', 'activity', 'beach sports or activities', 'nature or outdoor', 'historical or cultural', 'religious', 'budget', 'leisure', and 'upscale'). This study found that the most important push and pull factors as perceived by Saudi tourists are 'cultural value' and 'religious'. It also confirms the relationship between push and pull factors.