City Tourism in South Africa: Diversity and Change

Abstract

City tourism is a complex phenomenon and expanding in significance within the international tourism economy. Within the context of a vibrant and challenging global scholarship around cities as tourism destinations this article interrogates the development and trajectories of city tourism destinations in South Africa. Attention centers on unpacking the differential performance of the country's eight metropolitan areas and its network of 22 secondary cities. This analysis confirms that cities are important multimotivated tourism destinations because people travel to them for several different purposes including for business, leisure and entertainment, to visit friends and relatives, or for health or religious reasons. It is revealed that the country's 30 cities are key nodes in the national tourism space economy particularly for tourism spend. Evidence is shown of considerable diversity between city destinations with sharp contrasts between the patterns of tourism observed in the metropolitan areas as opposed to the secondary cities. Further differentiation is demonstrated at the level of individual city destinations in respect of different origins, purposes of travel, and relative contribution of tourism to local economic development.