The Uneven Geography of Tourism in South Africa

Abstract: Understanding the spatial dimensions of tourism is one of the core challenges for geographers involved in tourism studies. The aim in this paper is to pursue a geographical analysis of uneven patterns of tourism in South Africa and specifically to unpack the key trends observed in the country‟s tourism space economy. The analysis is conducted between three groupings of municipalities as destinations or tourism spaces. These three groups are demarcated as the metropolitan areas, the rural spaces of the priority district municipalities, and what is called the intermediate space of the remaining non-priority district municipalities. The findings show the dominance of South Africa‟s tourism space economy by the metropolitan areas. In addition, the analysis shows these three different tourism spaces exhibit different trajectories in terms of growth performance (numbers of trips, bednights and visitor spend), origin of visitors (domestic versus international) and purpose of travel (leisure, business, VFR and other). Interpreting the characteristics of these tourism spaces is an essential first step for improved local tourism planning