1st Edition

Urban Tourism in the Developing World The South African Experience

By Gustav Visser Copyright 2007
    340 Pages
    by Routledge

    340 Pages
    by Routledge

    Over the past decade, the field of urban tourism has consolidated with the appearance of several books that concentrate upon the Western European and North American experience. Recently, the scope and range of urban research has widened considerably, including the welcome appearance of studies that examine the tourism phenomenon in cities outside the Euro-American heartland.Despite this growing international body of debate and scholarship on tourism and cities, particularly in the developed North, literature that relates to the developing world as a whole, and to Africa in particular, remains sparse. The task of Urban Tourism in the Developing World: The South African Experience is to augment the current international scholarship concerning urban tourism in the developing world. More especially, the contributors draw attention to a range of case studies from South Africa that provide some starting points to address the uneven scholarly coverage of urban tourism the African context has received to date. In addition, the research material presented here seeks to contribute toward raising the South African, and indeed the African profile, within growing international scholarship concerning issues of urban tourism and development.This collection aims to expand an emerging South African and African tourism research "voice" concerning the tourism and development nexus, as well as to stem critiques that this body of research appears to have developed in a theoretical vacuum, divorced from broader international tourism research discourses. This collection of essays not only further develops an independent South African tourism perspective, but also presents research that is closely tied to international urban tourism research debates. In addition, this analysis of urban tourism in the South African context enriches the rather Western-oriented theories of urban tourism discourse through its emphasis on how urban tourism is evolving in urban Africa.

    1. Tourism in Urban Africa: Setting the Scene Part One: Urban Tourism in Africa: Current Research and Current Trends 2. Tourism Research and Urban Africa: The South African Experience 3. International Tourist Flows and Urban Tourism in South Africa 4. “Sho’t Left”: Changing Domestic Tourism in South Africa Part Two: Urban Tourism Types in Africa 5. Conference and Exhibition Tourism in South Africa 6. Festival Tourism in Urban Africa: The Case of South Africa 7. Second Homes Tourism in Africa: Reflections on the South African Experience 8. Creative Industries and Urban Tourism: South African Perspectives Philosophical Dimensions of Public Policy 9. Gay Tourism in South Africa: The Cape Town Experience 10. Township Tourism in Africa: Emerging Tour Operators in Gauteng, South Africa Part Three: Urban Tourism Experiences across the South African Urban Hierarchy 11. Urban Tourism in Cape Town 12. Urban Tourism in Durban 13. Tourism Promotion in “Difficult Areas”: The Experience of Johannesburg Inner City 14. Understandings of Urban Regeneration, Heritage and Environmental Justice at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg 15. Tourism in Small Town South Africa

    Biography

    Christian M. Rogerson is Professor of Human Geography in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Gustav Visser is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein.