Responsible Tourism Thirty Years Into South African Democracy

An article by Ian Kilbride, published on 25 June 2024.

One of the few economic success stories of the post-apartheid era is tourism. The ending of apartheid thirty years ago was a key turning point for this sector as it literally opened the world to South Africa and South Africa to the world. Even the institutional legacies of apartheid, such as Robben Island, have become dark tourism attractions. Dark tourism is a recently recognised sub-sector that focuses on visitors wishing to experience destinations associated with tragic and poignant histories.

As a key component of its ‘new’ economy, it is vitally important that South Africa not only maintains its recent tourism successes, but also grows this valuable sector sustainably. Herein lies the challenge.

Success is relative too. South Africa is a middling 55^th out of 119 countries ranked in the 2024 World Economic Forum Travel and Tourism Index, which is an improvement of seven places since 2019, but still below countries such as Kazakhstan, Thailand and Malaysia. Despite being a long-haul (over five to six hours flying time) destination from its principal tourist visitor market of Europe and North America, however, Mzansi remains the leading tourist destination in Sub-Saharan Africa. For many visitors to South Africa, the drawback of being a long-haul destination is off-set by the country’s affordability, cost competitiveness and the overall quality of the tourist experience.

Yet, issues other than cost and quality are factoring into both the demand and supply side of global tourism and South Africa has to become and remain an attractive destination when measured against these new and emerging considerations, such as sustainability. While sustainable tourism has become a popular mantra, it is a slippery concept. Reduced to its essence, sustainable tourism accounts for current and future economic social and environmental impacts and addresses the needs of visitors, host communities, the environment and the industry. Fine, but how is this laudable objective to be achieved in practical terms? One answer lies in yet another ‘new term’, that of responsible tourism.

Though the concept of responsible tourism was not founded in South Africa, its institutionalisation was. Crafted alongside the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, the Cape Town Declaration on Responsible Tourism defined and set the benchmark for achieving sustainable tourism globally. Embracing seven general requirements ranging from empowering local communities, to making a positive contribution to nature conservation and sensitivity to local culture, responsible tourism calls for changed behaviour on all sides of the tourism equation.

While embracing social, economic and environmental responsibility, the Cape Town Declaration acknowledges that government policy alone will not engender more responsible tourism. Though vital, responsible corporate practices by the tourism industry will not bring about changed tourist awareness and behaviour. Equally, ‘lecturing’ tourists to be more responsible in their behaviour is anathema to the millions who holiday simply to take a break from responsibility itself.

Rather, responsible tourism is about all stakeholders taking responsibility for their actions towards sustainability. Yet a key challenge facing responsible tourism is the perception that it is at odds with cost and competitiveness, the ultimate growth drivers of the industry. This is a false binary. Evidence abounds that tourists, particularly those from Europe, are selecting holiday destinations on a range of factors beyond the traditional attractions of sun, sand and sea. In addition to the quality of the tourist experience, travelers across the spectrum from retirees to millennials are differentiating between offerings and product on the basis of criteria such as responsibility and sustainability. Notably, research suggests that an increasing number of tourists from the global north are prepared to pay a premium for the assurance that they are purchasing a responsible and sustainable tourism product.

In this regard, responsible and sustainable certification is a step in the right direction. More broadly, South African tourism policy has also developed responsible guidelines and codes of conduct which provide some objective criteria against which the entire sector can be evaluated.

But there are two overarching reasons why tourism in South Africa needs to become more responsible. Firstly, to avoid the negative impacts of tourism. The country needs more not fewer tourists, yet this growth brings challenges of overtourism such as we have witnessed in cities such as Barcelona and Venice. Barcelona has experienced a backlash of locals protesting against unsustainable tourist numbers and the effect this has on prices, rentals, and the quality of life. Venice has imposed a daily tariff on visitors to the sinking and at times stinking city. South Africa’s tourist attractions are not immune to this sense of local alienation or being crowded out by tourists and it is imperative that local tourism policy tackles this.

Secondly, and most importantly, responsible tourism means ensuring that local workers, suppliers and communities derive tangible benefits from the sector. This means closing down areas of economic leakage and placing local economic empowerment squarely at the centre of tourism planning and policy.

South African tourism has come a long way in the thirty years of democracy, but to ensure its growth and sustainability, the sector must become more responsible.