Tourism as a Vehicle for Local Economic Development in Small Towns? When Things Go Wrong: The Case of Aliwal North, South Africa

Abstract

Post-apartheid local economic development (LED) issues have been of central concern in South African economic planning. The aim of this investigation was to examine the challenges of tourism-led LED in Aliwal North, a small town in South Africa. It shows that despite the many tourism products that could potentially be deployed as a development driver for LED in this town and its hinterland, a range of challenges have frustrated such ambitions. Challenges involve poor management of key tourism products, a lack of targeted and coordinated marketing activities of the destination and a lack of a coordinated stakeholder relationship in the broader destination region, as well as limited management capacity and funding.

Dynamics and Causality Among Economic Growth, Financial Development and Budgetary Allocation to the Tourism Sector of Bangladesh

“…If the increase of allocation results in affirmative changes in the economy then the budget is considered to be appropriately utilized. It is, therefore, important to access how the increase in budgetary allocation to an industry contributes to the economic growth and development (Kontsiwe and Visser, 2019;McGuire et al, 2020). The result of the assessment provides decision-makers whether the budgetary allocation to the industry is worthy.…”

Using Municipal Tourism Assets for Leveraging Local Economic Development in South Africa

“…South Africa is one country in the global South which has seen the recent emergence of some writings and debates which are probing questions surrounding tourism and place-based development (Rogerson, 2014;Dlomo and Tseane-Gumbi, 2017;Lawrence and Rogerson, 2018;Drummond and Snowball, 2019;Kontsiwe and Visser, 2019;Rogerson and Collins, 2019;Rogerson, 2019a, 2019b;Rogerson and Visser, 2020). The 1996 Constitution of South Africa assigned a dynamic role for local governments to overcome serious development challenges and catalyse local economic and social development (Nel and Rogerson, 2016a;Venter, 2020).…”

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“…With much optimism attached by national government to tourism's importance as a driver for renewing growth of the flagging South African economy it is unsurprising that the promotion of tourism is currently the most widespread focus for local economic development planning (Nel and Rogerson, 2016b). In particular, tourism development is seen as of special significance in many South African small towns (Donaldson, 2007;Rogerson and Rogerson, 2014;Donaldson, 2018;Kontsiwe and Visser, 2019;Rogerson and Rogerson, 2019a).…”

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