Abstract
The study looks at ethnic marketing strategies in relation to domestic leisure tourism promotion
and evaluates the effectiveness of this approach. The study also provides some insight into the perspective of
ethnic consumers towards ethnic marketing initiatives. A mixed methods approach was used during the study
with the qualitative component involving structured interviews with key marketing stakeholders involved in
promoting domestic leisure tourism in Johannesburg. For the quantitative phase, data was collected using
questionnaire surveys from a sample of 200 black South Africans at a popular leisure tourism site, namely
Gold Reef City in Johannesburg. The findings show that most marketers refrain from using ethnic marketing
initiatives when promoting domestic tourism. Further findings reveal that ethnic marketing has not had a
notable effect in motivating black South Africans to engage in domestic leisure tourism. However, the ethnic
consumers surveyed indicated a willingness to travel more should marketers opt to promote domestic leisure
tourism using indigenous South African languages. Tourism marketers in a multicultural market can translate
marketing campaigns into various ethnic languages in order to appeal to a broader consumer population and
simultaneously target an important market segment, namely the ethnic consumer. Globally, there has been an
uptake in ethnic marketing as many marketers realized that treating various ethnic groups as a homogeneous
group resulted in the loss of many opportunities. There is still however, limited empirical research focusing
on the ethnic marketing discourse particularly in relation to tourism promotion and the study offers some
insight into the knowledge gap that currently exists.