The impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry: An exploratory study for sustainable recovery in the City of Tshwane

Abstract

South Africa has one of the largest and most developed tourism industry markets across the globe. However, the industry remains vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters. The main concern has been the historical emergence of unforeseen pandemics and other outbreaks that continue to impact international tourism economies. With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, South Africa became one of the epicentres of the virus hotspot cases, both globally and regionally. The literature has highlighted that the pandemic led to a beacon of economic reduction as a result of the negative impacts in the demand and supply side for the tourism industry. Various government institutions were under pressure to adopt hard lockdown regulations in an attempt to mitigate the pandemic, thus leading to a sudden halt for many tourism establishments. Currently, the tourism industry has commenced its economic functions and normal activities. The recovery prospects appear to be sluggish in some metropolitan regions of South Africa. As a result, tourism economic contributions continue to fall due to lack of proper mechanisms to restore the industry. The main aim is to explore a possible developmental and sustainable recovery pathway, as focus is narrowed to tourist attractions, this is a sub-sector that has been overlooked. The study makes use of secondary data through written documents such as from governmental departments, Google Scholar, articles, journals, electronic books, and other relevant sources, while the primary data is mainly sourced through conducting semi-structured interviews and case study methods. The pandemic had a severe economic impact on various sub-sectors of the tourism industry, hence there is a recommendation for an urgent prerequisite of governmental intervention, as well as robust stakeholder collaboration support. The study emphasises attention only on the tourist attraction sub-system, and endeavours to restore tourism appeal, attraction, and activities in the city of Tshwane.