Ongoing investigation into the travel behaviour of South African national park visitors
The study’s primary aim is to investigate the changes in the travel behaviour of national park visitors, in the context of significant recent world events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and challenging economic and geopolitical climates.
In April 2020, while severe restrictions on mobility were in place in various countries, SANParks measured visitor perceptions and future travel intentions by gathering feedback from over 6 000 national park visitors. The results provided early indications of travellers’ plans to change their habits. However, much has transpired globally since then. As a continuation of this early study, researchers from the Tourism Research and Scientific Services units analysed data from SANParks’ tourism systems. Comparing tourism statistics and reservation data from a pre-pandemic year (Oct 2018 – Sept 2019) with a mid-pandemic year (Oct 2020 – Sept 2021) revealed several interesting findings. Although tourist visits were drastically reduced, camping unit occupancy improved substantially (Fig. 1), and most parks witnessed an increase in the number of overnight trips taken by domestic visitors and the length of stay.
The next phase of the research intends to explore the shifts in travel behaviour more rigorously by conducting another large survey, covering a broad set of behavioural and attitudinal aspects related to travel, including what a visit to a national park during turbulent times means to visitors. This will be done in collaboration with researchers from three universities: University of Macau (China), Oklahoma State University (US) and the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management (US). The insights into current tourist attitudes, buying behaviour, and preferences can inform tourism initiatives in demand planning, yield management, product development, and marketing. Monitoring these changes and their underlying drivers can help determine whether behaviour changes are transient or whether the trends are likely to persist and form part of permanently altered visitor behaviour patterns. An enhanced understanding of the meaning and significance that visitors affix to national park visits could further highlight the contribution of protected areas in augmenting visitors’ physical, psychological, and social well-being.
Figure 1. Comparison of a pre-pandemic year with a mid-pandemic year showed that although tourists numbers decreased, camping unit occupancy increased. These are some of the interesting changes in travel behaviour during the worst of the COVID-19 period.
This article was written by Liandi Slabbert and originally published in the 2021/2022 Research Report.