African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure (Jan 2014)
A concessionaire model for food and beverage operations in South African National Parks
Abstract
In recent years, protected areas have come under pressure due to the budget cuts of government. As a result, national parks have had to devise strategies by means of which they are able to generate additional revenue, in order to remain competitive. Such a strategy is the introduction of public-private partnerships, which allows the private sector to operate certain lodging facilities, restaurants and shops within parks. SANParks introduced their commercialization strategy in 2000 and overall it has been a success. However, despite earning much needed revenue; there are many complaints and overall dissatisfaction from tourists with restaurant and shop facilities operated by concessionaires in SANParks. A survey capturing more than 5000 questionnaires was conducted to explore SANParks concessionaires in terms of food and beverages to identify factors relating to the consumption of food and beverages by tourists. The data was analysed to provide information needed to construct a model for concessionaire food and beverage operations in SANParks. Data provided a demographic profile of respondents, factor analysis provided food consumption factors and lastly structural equation modelling which provided goodness of fit indices for the concessionaire model. The purpose of this study was to construct a model for concessionaire food and beverage operations at SANParks.
