Tourism through the lens of a human geographer: a view from the South

My journey with geography started more than 40 years ago when I was introduced to Peter Haggett's (1972) book: Geography: a modern synthesis. In the introductory chapter, the author used the distribution of people on the beach as a conical example of spatial analysis, linking theoretical, empirical and methodological considerations. I was fascinated with this analysis of human behaviour in a spatial context, and as my journey continued, the multifaceted dimensions of geography that stretches beyond physical and cultural components of places and spaces, still hold my attention. Geography provided me with the conceptual base (scientific vocabulary, theoretical concepts and constructs), and methodological approaches and tools for analysis to better my understanding of the world. Between 1988 and 1993, I collected data for my PhD studies in the Warmbaths district (today Bela-Bela in the Limpopo Province) of South Africa (Ferreira, 1993). My PhD focussed on a geographical analysis of the economy of the Warmbaths district. Tourism was one of the three major economic sectors of the local economy, while the other two were agriculture and mining. My geographical background enabled me to complete a spatial analysis of 12 tourism nodes consisting of warm water spa, safari-lodge and holiday farm developments. Geography provides the framework or lens through which we can view, explore and understand various phenomena of the world in which we live (Nelson, 2017) and I concur with Gill's (2012) idea that one of geography's strengths is its synthesising role as an interdisciplinary discipline.

Tourism is increasingly being viewed as an integral component of economic and political development and is no longer seen as an ephemeral activity unrelated to everyday life (Hannam, 2008). Rafferty (1993, p. 6) states that:

few disciplines are so closely related to tourism as geography – the science of spatial analysis, with several subfields. Its concern with identification, description, analysis, and spatial distributions of phenomena and their various areal associations makes geography a key discipline for tourism.

By conducting tourism research, geographers do in no way have to evacuate their academic discipline (Lundgren, 1984); quite the opposite is true. Geographers have imaginatively and substantially contributed to the analysis of tourism phenomena, for example through recreation in national parks (Wolfe, 1952); resource and park planning (Butler & Boyd, 2000; Nelson, 1970); spatial penetration and the dynamics of tourism space (Miossec, 1976); carrying capacity in wilderness areas (Lucas, 1964; Wagar, 1964); limits of acceptable change (Stankey, Cole, Lucas, Pietersen, & Frissell, 1985); recreation opportunity spectrum (Clarke & Stankey, 1979); an evolution-development model for tourism destinations (Butler, 1980); planning and zoning of tourism destinations (Gunn, 1993); tourism as the regional development factor (Marsh, 1975; Sharpley & Telfer, 2002; Williams & Shaw, 1988); political economic approaches (Britton, 1991; Ioannides & Debbage, 1997); and sustainability issues in tourism communities and environments (Wall & Mathieson, 1982; Hall & Lew, 1998; Gössling & Hall, 2006; Saarinen, 2013).

Tourism researchers work in a field that is highly complex (Baggio, 2008), largely nonlinear, integrative, generally unpredictable, qualitative and characterised by cases giving rise to multiple outcomes (Farrell & Twining-Ward, 2004). Geographers are well equipped to work in the tourism field because they understand the worth of a ‘holistic’ approach, work on the interface of the physical and human environments (Gill, 2012), and have a good understanding of system dynamics (settlement systems and ecosystems) (Gossling, Scott, Hall, Cerron, & Dubois, 2012) and interconnections, ecological thresholds, social-ecological relations and how social ecological systems-thinking can assist in adaptive management of tourism destinations (national parks, islands and coastal beaches). Tourism geographers use new paradigms such as evolutionary economic geography (Brouder, 2014) and resilience theory (Lew, 2014) to explain the path dependency, the evolution of destinations and how certain destinations have the capacity to break loose from their lock-in situations or have the adaptive capacity to ‘bounce’ back after major disasters.

Finally, and returning to the ‘South’ again – South Africa is, in an economic development sense and in terms of its geographical location (a far distance from the major tourist generating markets), part of the ‘periphery’. In terms of international tourism flows, South Africa can mainly be seen as a ‘tourist receiving region’ and less than 10% of South Africans can afford to travel internationally. The South African tourism geographers consist of a small ‘critical mass’ working on a variety of topics. Among these geographers focussing on tourism-related themes are: Chris Rogerson (local and regional development, route tourism, SMMEs, pro-poor tourism development, millennium development goals, innovation); Gustav Visser (gay leisure spaces, backpackers, second homes); Robert Preston Whyte (wine tourism, climate change); Lindiswe Magi (access to beaches); Thandi Nzama (management of world heritage sites, tourism development); Sanette Ferreira (social carrying capacity and national parks, crime and destination image, trans-frontier areas and sustainable tourism, wine tourism development); Gijsbert Hoogendoorn (second homes, climate change); Ronnie Donaldson (art festivals, MICE, destination image, race and access to national parks); Jayne Rogerson (evolution of the hotel sector of South Africa, greening of hotels, urban tourism); Kevin Mearns (community-based ecotourism, environmental management); Clinton van der Merwe (historical and cultural tourism) and Tracy Mackay (adventure tourism). This list of tourism geographers in South Africa cannot serve as a complete list because other human geographers also occasionally publish articles related to tourism. The geographers included in the list are scholars that have been active in the tourism field for more than a decade.

I conclude by quoting Butler (2004, p. 156): ‘As geographers, we should know at least where we have been and where we are now, even if we may not be sure of where we are going next.’