Accommodation services for competitive tourism in Sub-Saharan Africa: Historical evidence from Malawi

Abstract

The accommodation services sector is a vital underpinning of the competitiveness of destinations in especially emerging tourism regions of the global economy. Within the environment of Africa building the competitiveness of countries as tourism destinations is inseparable from the challenge of establishing a network of different forms of accommodation at competitive prices and internationally acceptable quality standards. This paper uses a longitudinal approach to analyse the development of the accommodation services sector in one African country - Malawi - which is scaling up its tourism industry. Using historical evidence the objective is to examine the unfolding evolution of accommodation services as a factor in enhancing tourism destination competitiveness. The chequered pathway followed in Malawi to building the country’s network of hotels and small-scale accommodation establishments is traced from the colonial period to post-independence developments. It is argued that in understanding the historical evolution of accommodation services policy re-orientations have been significant drivers of change.

Geographies of tourism development and planning

“…Overall, there is only limited research by geographical scholars that seriously investigate tourism geographies of the past which, it can be argued, is essential to inform comprehension of the transformation of tourism destinations and how we arrived at contemporary tourism development and planning issues (Butler, 2015;Saarinen, 2004;Walton, 2003Walton, , 2009b. The value addition for tourism geographers to pursue historical research is evidenced by the findings of, for example, a cluster of African studies variously around shifting patterns of accommodation services (Magombo, Rogerson & Rogerson, 2017;Pandy & Rogerson, 2014;Rogerson, 2011;Rogerson, 2013), the evolving architecture of transport infrastructure for tourism development (Pirie, 2009(Pirie, , 2011a(Pirie, , 2011b(Pirie, , 2013, and the continued imprint of apartheid planning on the contemporary South African tourism landscape (Rogerson, 2016(Rogerson, , 2017. Progress in tourism geographical research around development and planning therefore can be enriched by the extended application of historical perspectives in order to inform contemporary debates and practices.…”

The Serviced Apartment Sector in the Urban Global South: Evidence From Johannesburg, South Africa

“…The historical growth of the commercial lodging or accommodation services sector must be understood as an accompaniment to, as well as necessary foundation for, tourism development (Timothy & Teye, 2009;Rogerson & Rogerson, 2018). For tourism destinations the making and consolidation of an accommodation infrastructure is one of the prerequisites for initiating tourism expansion as well as for the building of destination competitiveness (Magombo et al, 2017;Mazilu et al, 2017). Within the specific context of destinations in the global South the evolution of an appropriate network of lodging offerings is viewed as essential for the long-term scaling-up of the contribution of tourism to national economies (Christie et al, 2013).…”

“…The significance of the lodging sector for promoting tourism development in sub-Saharan Africa is stressed by Novelli (2015). Limitations in the quality and range of accommodation infrastructure can be a significant constraint to the fulfilment of the 'African dream' for tourism to be a driver for continental economic growth an d livelihoods improvement (Christie et al, 2013;Novelli, 2015;Magombo et al, 2017) .…”

“…As is shown elsewhere Johannesburg has a diversified economic base which is dominated overall by the sectors of financial and business services . Although tourism places a vital role in Johannesburg's economyparticularly as a labour absorptive sector -in relation to job creation in the city the city cannot be characterised as having a tourism-led economy (Rogerson & Rogerson, 2017).…”

Accommodating business travellers: The organisation and spaces of serviced apartments in Cape Town, South Africa

“…Among a range of issues that have come under recent scholarly scrutiny are hotel environmental management practices (Tsai et al, 2014), the drivers of green innovation (Chou, 2014), sustainable water management (Kasim et al, 2014) and key locational influences on hotel investment (Puciato, 2016). Geographers have contributed a stream of works, inter alia, on developing a spatial typology of accommodation establishments in borderlands (Timothy, Gelbman, 2015), understanding the evolutionary change and the inter-and intra-urban location of hotels in particular countries (Shoval, 2006;Shoval et al, 2011;Rogerson, 2013aRogerson, , 2013bRogerson, , 2014aRogerson, , 2014bFerreira, Boshoff, 2014;Li et al, 2015;Magombo et al, 2017), the role of hotels as civic landmarks and their historical evolution (McNeill, McNamara, 2009, 2012, hotels as key political spaces (Craggs, 2012), the segmentation of the hotel sector (Rogerson, , 2011a(Rogerson, , 2001b(Rogerson, , 2013c, and most recently addressed the linkages between 'walkability' and patterns of tourism accommodation (Ram, Hall, 2018).…”