Gijsbert Hoogendoorn

Current paths in South African tourism research

The African continent is not well represented in international tourism scholarship. Nevertheless, tourism is afforded considerable policy importance in the region, not least South Africa, Africas leading tourism destination. The number of investigatory voices interrogating the nexus of tourism and development in South Africa is small relative to other continents, but expanding. This article provides a review of the existing research paths and proposes new directions for scholarship focused on the South African tourism system.

The role of second homes in local economic development in five small South African towns

Local economic development (LED) is receiving greater policy prominence in a range of southern African settings. Strategic interventions often draw on tourism development to attain LED objectives. This investigation contends that second home development can serve as an additional focus for tourism strategies aimed at LED, and demonstrates that important LED objectives, such as developing and maintaining enterprises, generating employment and attracting capital inflows, can be achieved through second home development.

Changing coutrysides, changing villages : second homes in Rhodes, South Africa

ABSTRACT Rural geographies have changed significantly over the past half century. These reconfigured geographies are increasingly denoted as evolving from a productivist to a post-productivist state and second home development has increasingly been implicated as contributing to such change. This paper considers this contention in the context of Rhodes, South Africa. It is argued that second home development is contributing towards an emerging post-productivist countryside. A broad analysis of the impact of second home ownership is given with reference to its economic influence. The paper concludes that coinciding with the post- productivist changes in the Rhodes countryside, second home ownership has contributed to employment creation and has had a varied tourism and regional impact which has added much needed support to the economy of the town.

The economic impact of second home development in small-town South Africa.

Abstract This investigation aims to make a contribution towards addressing the general lack of academic reflection on second homes in the developing-world context. In particular, it aims to provide insight into the economic impacts of second home development on smaller settlements in remote rural areas of South Africa. While empirical evidence demonstrates the unique development characteristics and impacts of South African second home development, the investigation also highlights commonalities with the impacts of second home development as researched in other countries. Specifically, various near-generic economic impacts of second homes observed in the developed North are echoed in small-town South Africa. The stimulation of new capital inflows, employment creation and property price appreciation stand out as key similarities.

Second Homes: Curse or Blessing? A Review 36 Years Later

Abstract Terry Coppocks (1977c) edited collection, Second homes: Curse or blessing? (Oxford: Pergamon) remains the most influential work investigating second-home tourism. Coppocks edited collection explored second-home tourism in a variety of locations globally. Different themes were studied in the collection, which includes planning aspects of second-home development, spatial modelling and predictive modelling and second homes as holiday accommodation (to name but three). Over the last 30 years, second-home research has blossomed, especially since the mid-1990s. Thus, we found it fitting to review the marked influence of this edited collection 30 years after the first conference was held that formed the basis of this book. Therefore, this article will investigate the relevance of the issues identified during the 1970s to issues surrounding present-day second-home tourism. The argument made in this article is that many of the issues that Coppock identified remain important today; however, many of the issues identified are less relevant to many second-home landscapes in both the developed and developing worlds.

Tourism, second homes, and an emerging South African postproductivist countryside

Issues concerning postproductivism have seen limited direct systematic research attention within South African tourism studies. However, it has recently been proposed that postproductivism as part of tourism development, although difficult to discern in its early stages, has as a process gathered sufficient momentum to warrant scholarly attention in the local context. This article develops this contention by focusing on the role of second home tourism as a contributor to developing a South African postproductivist countryside. The investigation tracks the development of a postproductivist countryside in one of South Africas main agricultural regions: the eastern Free State. Drawing on the experiences of the rural town of Clarens and its hinterland, the diversification of economic activities away from classic productivist functions to those of postproductivism linked to consumptive activities, such as second home tourism, is outlined.

Tourism geography in the global South: new South African perspectives

This article introduces a theme collection of geographical authored contributions on tourism in Southern Africa to reinforce the position of South Africas premier geographical serial as an important publishing outlet for research in tourism studies as a whole and for tourism geographical works in particular. The group of papers addresses a diverse set of themes around greening and tourism, business tourism, Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR) travel, second homes tourism and tourism development issues. Two sections of material are offered. First, a brief context is provided of directions in international tourism geography. Second, a review is offered on the directions and contributions which have been made by geographers to tourism studies in South Africa. In particular, the starting point is the benchmark paper which appeared in 2002 in this journal by Magi and Nzama [2002. Perspectives on recreation and tourism geographies in South Africa, South African Geographical Journal, 84, 67–76] outlining the relative novelty of tourism geography research in Southern Africa as well as its possibilities for future development. With the publication of over 100 articles by local tourism geographers, a decade later this paper reflects on the growing maturity of South African tourism geography scholarship.

Stumbling over researcher positionality and political-temporal contingency in South African second-home tourism research

Abstract Over the past two decades, South Africa has experienced a series of fundamental changes in its institutional structures and society generally. This article provides an exploration into how these changes have impacted on field-based tourism research. Drawing on experiences involving a range of research contexts and different researcher types, the article first considers the impact of researcher positionality, demonstrating the dynamic ways in which identities and attendant power relations are created and transformed in various multicultural settings. Second, the article considers the importance of political-temporal contingency in framing the research process, illuminating the impact of research focus vis-à-vis the political and temporal context of the research and informants. The article concludes by suggesting that we consider these observations on a broader canvas, reflecting on the challenges these factors present researchers focusing on second-home development in South Africa.

Second home owners' perceptions of a polluted environment: the case of Hartbeespoort

Second homes tourism has shown that the scenic natural environment influences the location and development of second homes. Little attention has been paid to the potential impact degraded environments can have on second homes tourism and more specifically their owners. The impacts associated with the degraded environment of Hartbeespoort in South Africa include the decline in property values of second homes, their recreational place utility and consequently the place attachment value of the owners. Potential knock-on effects include the undermining of second home tourism, which directly affects the local economy of Hartbeespoort. Knowing the implications of a degraded environment for second home tourism may incite more responsible behaviour by tourists themselves in addition to an improved tourism policy by government and the acknowledgement of the importance of the natural environment across municipal and provincial boundaries.

Tourism and climate change: a review of threats and adaptation strategies for Africa

The intersection of tourism and climate change has seen significant research over the past two decades, focusing particularly on issues of mitigation and adaptation in the global North. Research output has predominantly been centred on the Mediterranean and Nordic countries and number of localities in North America. The global South has seen significantly less investigation, despite having significantly lower adaptive capacity to the impacts of climate change, and numerous countries with rapidly growing tourism sectors. The African continent specifically has seen appreciably less research than other countries in the global South, despite arguably having the lowest adaptive capacity and projections of severe impacts of climate change to the tourism sector from temperature increases, changes in precipitation volume and sea level rise. This paper therefore presents a review of the existing literature on adaptation strategies of tourism sectors and participants in African countries. The crucial argument of this paper is in highlighting the need for an increase in research into the threats of climate change to tourism in African countries, identifying future research trajectories. The development of such knowledge would assist in the development of adaptation and mitigation strategies for these most vulnerable tourism economies.