African tourism industry employees: expenditure patterns and comparisons with other community members

ABSTRACT

Tourism is frequently put forward as a means to promote conservation and development. Numerous studies focus on tourists’ and tourism industry spending, but very few have looked at tourism staff spending. This paper examines spending patterns of 385 tourism staff in six southern African countries. The analysis includes understanding how much staff are spending, what factors impact on their spending and the local economic impacts of this spending in remote, rural areas. A comparison with 1400 respondents who are not working in tourism (non-staff) highlights the potential indirect multiplier effects and where rural households are spending their income. The results show that tourism staff are spending, on average, more than other community members (non-staff) and that a large percentage of their spending is local and has important positive impacts on other households, highlighting the wider importance of tourism employment, beyond simple job creation and the increased potential benefit-sharing from tourism, through staff spending. Promoting the use of local suppliers of goods and services would increase these induced impacts further. Future research should focus on further rounds of tourism staff spending to determine the full development impact.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism impacts
• staff spending
• linkages
• induced impacts
• local multipliers
• poverty reduction
• southern Africa

Acknowledgments

The author would like to gratefully acknowledge funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) through the Environmental Economics Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at the University of Cape Town. Special thanks also to Wilderness Safaris for accommodation, transport and logistical support, and to the journal editors and anonymous reviewers who provided valuable feedback and comments.

Disclosure statement

The author was supported by Wilderness Safaris to conduct a study on the impact of the company's activities on rural communities. This study was, however, performed as an independent doctoral researcher looking to discover the realities of tourism and community development and was in no way directly influenced by the company, who merely supported the author logistically and by providing a stipend.

Additional information

Funding

The author would like to gratefully acknowledge funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) through the Environmental Economics Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at the University of Cape Town.

Notes on contributors

Susan Snyman

Dr Susan Snyman is a research associate with the School of Tourism & Hospitality at the University of Johannesburg and Group Sustainability Manager for Wilderness Safaris. Sue has a PhD degree (Resource Economics) from the School of Economics, University of Cape Town, with her research focus being rural livelihoods, livelihood diversification, community engagements and developments around protected areas (PAs), local community attitudes towards, and benefit-sharing from, tourism and PAs.