Unpacking the Growth of Hotel Chains in Africa: Enterprises and Patterns

Abstract

The internationalization of hotel chains is a topic of rising interest in tourism research

A Decade of Progress in African Urban Tourism Scholarship

“…Issues of concern have related to inter alia, hotels as a property asset class (Rogerson, J 2012a), the segmentation and appearance of different forms of hotel (Rogerson, J 2010(Rogerson, J , 2011a(Rogerson, J , b, 2013a, liquor and the changing character of hotels (Rogerson, C 2011a), the greening of hotels and responsible tourism practices (Frey and George 2012;Rogerson and Sims 2012), food sourcing patterns (Pillay and Rogerson 2013) and shifting geographies both at the inter-urban and intra-urban scales of investigation (Rogerson, J 2012b(Rogerson, J , 2013b(Rogerson, J , c, d, e, 2014aFerreira and Boshoff 2014). Further work has appeared variously on riads as an element in urban regeneration (Lee 2008), the role of government in urban hotel development (Azmy and Atef 2011), consumers' urban hotel choice behaviour (Fawzy 2010), the mushrooming of new hotel investment across Africa (Rogerson, J 2014c) and on hotel location decisionmaking in urban Ghana (Adam 2012, 2013; Adam and Amuquandoh 2013; Adam and Mensah 2013). Outside of the hotel sector, other forms of accommodation have been given scholarly attention.…”

“…Business tourism is critical in the landscape of cities such as Accra, Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban. The vital significance of business tourism in these and other African cities has been documented in a small group of investigations (Rogerson, C 2005(Rogerson, C , 2011b(Rogerson, C , 2014aRogerson and Lisa 2005;Mbaiwa et al 2007;Coles and Mitchell 2009;Mitchell and Coles 2009;Spenceley 2010;Donaldson 2013;Rogerson, J 2014c).…”

Urban tourism destinations in South Africa: Divergent trajectories 2001–2012

“…In 2001 these two metropolitan areas accounted for 47.3 of business tourism trips whereas in 2012 this had expanded to 57.7 percent. The growth of business tourism in Johannesburg is evident in the landscape of hotel developments which cluster particularly around the Sandton and Rosebank business nodes (Rogerson, 2014a(Rogerson, , 2014b. Ekurhuleni also records an increase in its relative share of business trips such that by 2012 it is the third most significant destination for business travel.…”

Hotel location in Africa’s world class city: The case of Johannesburg, South Africa

“…Timothy and Wall (1995: 65) state 'hotels are the purest and most visible manifestations of tourism in the city' . For tourism scholars, including geographers, the evolutionary development, internationalization as well as the location decision-making around hotels are therefore issues of rising importance (Niewiadomski, 2013a(Niewiadomski, , 2013bRogerson, 2014;Yang et al, 2014). It is observed, however, that research on hotels traditionally has been the preserve of hospitality researchers.…”

“…Further, there is a marked spatial unevenness in hotel research with most existing research confined to studies on the USA, Europe and Pacific Asia especially on China. From a global perspective research on the hotel sector in Africa is comparatively sparse (Rogerson, Rogerson, 2011;Rogerson, 2014). It is against this backdrop that this article investigates the changing location of hotels in South Africa's major city, Johannesburg, which aspires to be Africa's 'world class city' (Rogerson, Rogerson, 2014).…”