Tourism in urban Africa: The South African experience

A Decade of Progress in African Urban Tourism Scholarship

“…Geographically, the majority of this literature is concentrated on South Africa where tourism has emerged as a leading topic for urban researchers during recent years (Rogerson and Visser 2005;Visser and Hoogendoorn 2011;Visser 2013;Visser and Rogerson 2014). Nevertheless, there is an identified welcome growth of a stream of relevant studies concerning different aspects of urban tourism across several other African countries including Botswana (Mbaiwa et al 2007), Egypt (Fawzy 2010;Azmy and Atef 2011), Ethiopia (Vignati and Laumans 2010) and Namibia (Buning and Grunau 2014).…”

Resident Involvement and Participation in Urban Tourism Development: A Comparative Study in Maun and Gaborone, Botswana

“…Initially, South Africa's tourism industry was largely focused on wildlife and nature, and it lacked major policy initiatives to develop urban communities, especially during the apartheid period (Rogerson and Visser 2004). However, during the last two decades, intensive planning and development has created excellent examples of urban tourism development in major South African cities such as Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, and Johannesburg (Rogerson 2002(Rogerson , 2005Rogerson and Visser 2005). The key strategy has been to promote tourism (leisure/business/meetings market segments) in the urban areas to boost economic development, and this policy still continues to be the guiding framework (Rogerson 2005).…”

“…The key strategy has been to promote tourism (leisure/business/meetings market segments) in the urban areas to boost economic development, and this policy still continues to be the guiding framework (Rogerson 2005). Currently, the major cities in South Africa are brand name destinations that have achieved major accolades by hosting key international summits and conferences in the last few years (Rogerson 2005;Rogerson and Visser 2005). Furthermore, the World Cup 2010 in South Africa will likely create a magnetic appeal to showcase the urban development successes.…”

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

“…Law, 1993;Van der Berg et al, 1995;Page and Hall, 2003;Wober, 2002). Much of this work highlights the fact that increased interest in urban tourism is underpinned by escalating demand by tourists for urban historic sights and heritage cities, as well as by concerted efforts by policy makers to focus on the role of tourism in revitalising urban areas and their economies (Rogerson and Visser, 2005;Van der Merwe and Patel, 2005). Recently the investigatory gaze has been expanded to include research focusing on urban tourism in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, as well as China and Taiwan (Chang, 1999(Chang, , 2000McKercher et al, 2004McKercher et al, , 2005.…”

“…Until comparatively recently urban tourism has largely been invisible to the South African academic research community (Rogerson and Visser, 2005). The lack of research into urban tourism is somewhat perplexing, however, for unlike the situation in many developing countries, the contours of its development can be traced through an extensive urban geography.…”