Abstract:
Many countries around the world continue to consider or adopt tourism primarily for the economic benefits associated with it.
However, developing tourism has been a difficult aspiration for developing countries as they face significant barriers. This
paper examines the challenges to tourism development and their causative factors in Malawi. In-depth interviews were used
to collect primary data. Inadequate connectivity between source markets and Malawi, as well as inside the country,
underdeveloped tourist destinations and limited access to tourist information emerged as the main barriers to Malawi's
tourism development. It was further revealed that underfunding, the centralized management structure of the tourism
industry, lack of stakeholder collaboration, and an unfriendly business operating environment contribute to Malawi's tourism
development challenges. It is recommended that the government and other key tourism stakeholders should prioritise the
identified causative areas and among other things decentralise tourism administration and improve tourism statistics
collection and analysis. There is also a need to strengthen stakeholder collaboration and networking.
