The South African hotel industry, 1990 to 2010 : structure, segmentation and spatial change

D.Phil. (Geography)Geographical research, with its central concerns on place, space and the environment has been an important element of the growth and consolidation of tourism studies. Recent geographical research in tourism has investigated a variety of issues. Several areas where the contribution by geographers is notable include: destination planning and management, innovation, tourism entrepreneurship, human mobility, conservation and bio-security, international business, poverty reduction and pro-poor tourism and global environmental change. The movement of people away from their place of permanent residence creates a demand for lodging and other services in order to satisfy their tourist needs. The establishment, evolution and upgrading of the commercial accommodation sector, which includes hotels, guest houses, bed and breakfasts, backpacker hostels and home-stays, is an important research area for tourism scholars and geographers. Accommodation provides a temporary home for the tourist and different accommodation types, notably hotels, assume an important function in cities. Notwithstanding the central role played by hotels, the hotel sector is under researched within the disciplines of economic geography, urban studies and tourism scholarship. Since 1990 and the upsurge in tourist arrivals, scholarship on tourism research has become a prominent avenue of enquiry for South African geographers. Whilst there has been some research on mainly small forms of accommodation, the hotel, which is the most visible expression of tourism has been largely ignored. This thesis provides a contribution to the neglected issues regarding the production or supply of accommodation. The broad goal of this investigation is to understand and investigate the fundamental restructuring which has taken place in the South African hotel industry over the period 1990 to 2010. This restructuring of the hotel sector involved a set of both structural and spatial changes. The study period begins with the demise of apartheid and South Africa’s re-entry into the international tourism economy and ends with South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. This study provides a detailed analysis of the changing structure and spatial organization of the hotel sector in a developing tourism economy. It further investigates the hotel as a type of property asset class and undertakes an analysis of the drivers of the changing structure of hotel development. The study then investigates the appearance and growth of the phenomenon of market segmentation in the South African hotel industry. The research further seeks to interpret the spatial changes occurring in the hotel sector at both the national and intra-urban scale of locational choice and finally explores the different geographies of hotel change as differentiated by factors of hotel quality, size and segment. This thesis seeks to re-dress the gap in knowledge of the South African hotel sector, whilst acknowledging that additional avenues of hotel research require further investigation