Abstract
Ph.D. (Geography)
Adventure tourism is attracting a growing international scholarship. The present study contributes to this scholarship by examining the South African adventure tourism industry. It is argued that South Africa is a country well placed to support an adventure tourism sector. In particular, the physical features of the country lend themselves to adventure tourism with an abundance of exotic, outdoor and physically beautiful locations. Since the 1990s, adventure tourism has begun to feature as part of the South African tourism economy and expanding in significance as a niche sector of tourism. However, the sector suffers from neglect from tourism authorities and government in general, with an absence of a national policy on adventure tourism in South Africa.
This study set out to achieve two main aims. First, the study sought to establish the geography of the South African adventure tourism sector through the creation and analysis of a national database of adventure tourism enterprises. The analysis revealed that the sector is represented across all nine provinces of the country. However, in line with the tourism geography of South Africa as a whole, adventure tourism is polarised and three provinces, namely the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng dominate. It was also found that other than for 11 adventure-towns and a smattering of secondary cities, the metropolitan areas are major foci for adventure tourism enterprises. The industry was shown to be both a tourism-characteristic and a tourism-related product. Hard adventure, specifically SCUBA diving, was found to be the dominant subsector in South Africa. The second aim was to undertake a systemic study of three well developed sub-sectors of the adventure tourism economy in order to identify specific industry challenges. Sectoral case studies were undertaken of bungee jumping/bridge swinging, Great White shark tourism and white water rafting. All three case studies indicate that as a whole it is probable that adventure tourism is making a significant contribution to the South African economy, albeit facing a number of challenges that demand greater policy attention.