The Free State Tourism Economy: Current Dynamics, Immediate Challenges and Future Research Prospects

Spatialities of Urban Change: Selected Themes from Bloemfontein at the Beginning of the 21st Century

“…In terms of domestic tourist flows, the Free State is equally marginalised, accounting for only 6.9% (3.45 million trips) of all domestic tourism trips (49.1 million) (Visser and Kotze, 2006). A closer look at the data reveals that, of that percentage, only 32.9% were visitors from beyond the Free State, suggesting that domestic interprovincial travel was not a key element in the provincial tourism economy.…”

“…A total of 141 product providers participated in the survey, which entailed telephone interviews with all tourism product providers and institutions lasting between 15-45 minutes. The semi-structured questionnaire survey covered between 25-30 individual items (depending on the tourism 1 For an in-depth analysis of this investigation, see Visser (2005) and Visser and Kotze (2006). sector, some question were not applicable to all tourism product providers).…”

“…These tourists visit mainly for business and visiting friends and relatives (VFR) purposes. On the whole, however, the Free State is barely visible on the current international tourist travel radar (Visser and Kotze, 2006).…”

“…Overwhelmingly, the main research focus has been the large metropolitan complexes, particularly of Johannesburg, but also Cape Town and Durban. This is hardly surprising, since much of the growth in the South African tourism system -particularly that relating to the business, conference and similar market segments -has been concentrated in the established urban, amenity-rich areas such as the Western Cape, particularly the greater Cape Town metropolitan area, Gauteng -specifically Johannesburg -and KwaZulu-Natal, where the focus is on Durban (Visser and Kotze, 2006). On the other hand, there has been increased interest in urban tourism in the high natural and cultural amenity-rich small towns of KwaZulu-Natal and especially in the Western Cape (see Donaldson (2007) for a review).…”

“…It is in the context of the historically marginal position of the Free State province in the South African tourism system generally (Visser and Kotze, 2006), and specifically of Bloemfontein as a secondary city, that the paper aims to make a contribution. Despite official recognition of the potential significance of the tourism system to urban economic development, there have recently been no comprehensive studies into the structure and dynamics, or into the potential and opportunities, for urban tourism development in Bloemfontein.…”