Abstract
Small town tourism is attracting a growing international as well as South African scholarship. This paper addresses one thus far neglected theme of research about tourism in small towns, namely the historical development of the accommodation services economy. The objective in this paper is to analyse the evolution of accommodation services in one small tourist town in South Africa. The focus is upon seaside resort tourism and the case of Hermanus which is situated in South Africa’s Western Cape Province. Two sections of discussion are given. The first offers an overview of tourism development in this small town and the changing character of the tourism economy from the late 19th century to the present-day. The second reviews the historical development of the accommodation services sector in this popular leisure tourism destination. The research uses archival sources and applies a chronological approach. Overall, the analysis is a contribution both to the limited extant scholarship that seeks to understand historical issues about the tourism economy in South Africa and specifically the evolution of accommodation services in the country’s small towns. In addition, it represents a modest South African contribution to international research on seaside coastal resort development which is presently dominated by contributions that looks at coastal tourism in Europe and most especially the case of the United Kingdom.