Abstract
Urban tourism is attracting a growing international scholarship. The aim in this paper is to address the limited focus on historical aspects of urban tourism. Using a range of historical documentary sources this paper analyses the evolution of hotels in Johannesburg from the period of the establishment of the gold mining settlement to the period of the late 1940s. The methodology made use of primary historical data from a range of archival sources. The results reveal certain similar findings to those of other historical research on hotels, most notably the role of city’s top tier establishments as foci for the adoption of new technologies and of Johannesburg’s leading hotels as nodes of elite sociability. Nevertheless, in terms of interpretation, the most distinctive characteristic of the early hotel economy of Johannesburg was the subordination of the supply of accommodation services to the sale of liquor.