Essential Destination Appeal Preconditions for Sustainable and Competitive Tourism in South Africa

Abstract

To enable a country to appeal to tourists some essential preconditions must be met. If these preconditions are fulfilled, then it can generate tourism demand and bring about a sustainable competitive destination advantage. The aim of this paper is to determine which of the essential destination appeal preconditions enhances South Africa’s tourism competitiveness and sustainability. A quantitative research design was utilised with a nonprobability sample of 512 domestic and foreign tourists that have travelled within or to South Africa. The online survey took place on Google Forms and the data was analysed using STATISTICA version 16. The measuring instrument was validated by conducting exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and calculating Cronbach’s alpha coefficients to confirm factor reliability. Six hypotheses were tested to determine if there are relationships between three selected essential destination preconditions and sustainability and competitive tourism in South Africa. Multiple Regression Analysis revealed three statistically significant relationships, namely between country entry preconditions with competitiveness and fundamental marketing conditions with both sustainability and competitiveness. To improve South Africa’s tourism competitiveness, attention should be paid to simplify visa requirements and the country’s wildlife and parks must be actively marketed. To ensure South Africa’s tourism sustainability, all travel and tourism organisations should ensure that information is up-to-date and that they provide multiple travel and product and service booking channels. This study may be considered one of the first in South Africa to identify that fundamental marketing conditions are influential for both competitive- and sustainable tourism in South Africa.

Keywords

• country entry
• destination appeal
• fundamental marketing
• information sharing content
• preconditions
• south africa