Abstract
Cross-border tourism marketing and promotion is a widely
endorsed approach for encouraging regional tourism development. The
aim in this paper is to uncover an early historical example of regional
tourism development which occurred in colonial Southern Africa. Using
archival sources the study pinpoints the contributions of publicity
material produced by South African Railways for the promotion of
tourism in the territories of colonial Zimbabwe and Mozambique. In
encouraging international tourism to South Africa during the 1920s and
1930s there was an understanding that South Africa’s leading national
tourism assets were best packaged together for ‘transnational tourism
development’ with marketing for the iconic attraction of Victoria Falls as
well as Lourenço Marques. The destination which was promoted as
‘South Africa’ in tourism guidebooks did not correspond with the geopolitical entity of the Union of South Africa, instead it embraced the
attractions of Portuguese-controlled Mozambique and several tourism
products in the British-controlled territory of Rhodesia.