Tourism Innovation in the Global South: Evidence from the Western Cape, South Africa

Abstract

A research gap exists for the conceptual strengthening, measurement and analysis of innovation at the tourism firm and systems levels, especially in the context of the global South. This paper investigates tourism innovation in the Western Cape region of South Africa. In particular, the nature and types of innovation by tourism firms and system actors are interrogated. It is revealed that innovation by tourism firms is widespread, albeit is largely incremental in nature. The main contribution of this research is the development of an expanded evidence‐based tourism innovation typology from a cross‐sectoral survey of tourism firms and qualitative interviews undertaken with tourism system actors. In addition, recommendations are provided regarding measurement of innovation in tourism. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

ممارسات الإبتکار السیاحی فی صناعة السیاحة: دراسة حالة مصر

“…A YouTube channel called "Experience Egypt" was launched at the link: http://www.youtube.com/Egypt, through which videos are broadcast to promote Egypt as a promising tourist destination through the use of various campaigns such as "People To People" (European Travel Commission, 2014). This is consistent with the study of Booyens and Rogerson (2016) that marketing innovation includes the application of new promotional policies and this is evident in the case of Egypt from its reliance on one of the recent trends in marketing such as social media.…”

“…The types of innovation are extremely complex and diverse (Edquist, 2001), and there are many types of innovation in general and tourism innovation in particular. Depending on Schumpeter's definition, many researchers have agreed that tourism innovation can be divided into four main types product innovation, process innovation, organizational innovation, and marketing innovation (Decelle, 2004;OECD, 2005;Booyens and Rogerson, 2016). Although there is an agreement among some researchers on the existence of four main types of tourism innovation, there is a wide range of research and studies like Caulier-Grice et al (2012), Janiszek (2018) and Carayannis et al (2015) that dealt with other types of innovation in the field of tourism such as green innovation, technological innovation, and social innovation.…”

“…Marketing innovation is the introduction of new changes to the tourist product design and the application of new promotional policies in order to increase attractiveness to tourism products or enter new tourist markets (Hjalager, 2010;Booyens and Rogerson, 2016). Carayannis et al (2015, p.8) defined technological innovation as "a new technology that creates new products, hence new opportunities for the industry", so Diaconu (2011) stated that technological innovation should be only in products or processes.…”

ICT, infrastructure, and tourism development in Africa

“…ICT presents huge opportunities for growing and strengthening Africa’s tourism development (Adukaite and Cantoni, 2016; Adukaite et al, 2016; Ankomah and Larson, 2018; Booyens and Rogerson, 2016; Ukpabi et al, 2018) by “enabling direct promotion and commercialization of local tourism offerings in international markets, reducing dependence on big foreign intermediaries” (Petti and Passiante, 2009: 46). Tourism destinations are able to increase online presence via the Internet and become competitive in the global tourism market through off-line connectivity that offers the requisite tools and applications to undertake effective tourism management through collaboration, clustering, and links with private and public tourism and tourism-related actors.…”

Re-creating slum tourism: Perspectives from South Africa

“…Product innovation is an essential element for long-term sustainability of tourism destinations. The critical importance of innovation as a whole for tourism development in South Africa has been demonstrated in a number of recent investigations (Booyens, 2016;Booyens & Rogerson, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c, 2017a, 2017b. It is argued that one basis for expanding township tourism in South Africa is through maximizing the potential for creativity and the development of new innovative creative tourism products.…”