Urban tourism and climate change: Risk perceptions of business tourism stakeholders in Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract: The nexus of climate change and cities is acknowledged as of growing importance for inter-disciplinary research. In this article the focus is upon the perceptions of climate change and responses by tourism stakeholders in Johannesburg, South Africa’s leading city and major tourism destination. Using semi-structured qualitative interviews with 30 tourism stakeholders an analysis is undertaken of the risk perceptions of climate change. Overall the results suggest a major disconnect between the climate change threats as openly recognised by Johannesburg city authorities and of the risk perceptions as revealed by local tourism stakeholders. The predominant view articulated by tourism industry stakeholders is that climate change responses and associated sustainability initiatives are something of a ‘nice to have’ rather than a necessity given current the current state of awareness and of climate change risk perceptions by businesses

Tourism and Climate Change: Stakeholder Perceptions of At Risk Tourism Segments in South Africa

The aim is to investigate the perspectives of key South African tourism industry stakeholders surrounding the issue of climate change. Previous research has shown that while the tourism industry in many countries is aware of the significance and potential ramifications of climate change, it is not considered a pressing issue and not the least since the impact of the 2008 global economic crisis. In Africa, with the tourism sector potentially facing major threats from climate change, the need for further research is urgent especially with respect to stakeholder perceptions. The study analyzes the development of national policy towards climate change and tourism and the perceptions of 31 key stakeholders on the segments of the national tourism economy most at risk from climate change. The results show at national government level South Africa is seeking to enact tourism and climate based policies. This said, the degree to which such policies might be implementable must be questioned not only in relation to capacity issues at the scale of local government but by the depth of revealed commitment of stakeholders in terms of making meaningful adjustments to the challenges of climate change because of their perceptions of risk. In particular, the interviewees highlighted their awareness that climate change is responsible for threats to biodiversity as well as assets for coastal and marine tourism. Overall the stakeholders perceived differences in the impacts of climate change for different segments of the tourism economy. Of concern was that stakeholders gainsay the potential impacts of climate change for certain segments which international evidence suggests will most definitely be at risk.&nbsp

The timeshare industry of Africa: a study in tourism geography

Within the broad spectrum of tourism accommodation the timeshare industry is a distinctive segment which has attracted only limited research work. This paper represents a contribution to tourism geography as it investigates the location of timeshare resorts in Africa and comparative position of African destinations in the global timeshare economy. The analysis shows the timeshare resort industry in South Africa is the most significant on the continent and is distinctive in its reliance upon domestic rather than international tourists. In terms of the distribution of resorts the key locational consideration in Africa parallels that found in other parts of the world, namely the positioning of resorts in areas of high natural amenity. In the African context this has meant clustering resorts in coastal beach areas and attractive mountain locations, as well as in the areas which afford opportunities for timeshare consumers to experience the African bush. Finally, of note in South Africa is the growth of large timeshare property developments at casino resorts, a development which parallels the experience of certain timeshare developments in the USA

The making of the South African timeshare industry: spatial structure and development challenges

Research on the accommodation sector attracts only a small fraction of contemporary tourism scholarship relating to sub-Saharan Africa. This paper contributes to this expanding literature on segmentation and the accommodation sector in South Africa. Specifically, it examines the establishment and making of the timeshare industry as a distinctive form of accommodation within the national tourism economy. The timeshare industry in South Africa is the largest and most mature in sub-Saharan Africa and among the most important in the developing world. The analysis uses a longitudinal perspective in order to interpret the emerging spatial organisation and evolving structural issues that impacted upon the development of the timeshare industry in its formative years from 1978 to 2002. The study addresses a knowledge gap around the minimal pursuit of historical research within the existing international literature about timeshare

Tourism enterprises and climate change : some research imperatives

Abstract: The nexus of tourism and climate change is one that has encountered increasing academic interest and exploration by range of disciplines, in particular with prominent contributions made by geographers. Southern Africa is a region that is particularly vulnerable to the long-term impacts of climate change. It is against this background that this paper examines key debates from the growing international literature on climate change in order to identify research imperatives including for African scholars. Arguably, in analysing the potential outcomes and impacts of climate change on the tourism industry worldwide, and specifically the manner in which a number of tourism dependent businesses and by proxy tourism dependent communities and livelihoods may be increasingly vulnerable to climate change related stresses, adaptive actions which aim to reduce or counter such vulnerability become essential. Overall, as argued in this analysis, expanding the research agenda relating to tourism enterprises and climate change and most especially around the need for ‘adaptive pathways’ is of critical importance for tourism scholarship

Employers' and Employees' Understanding of Occupational Health and Safety Risks in Small Businesses: A Case Study

Many small businesses have hazardous work environments and exposures to significant occupational health and safety risks. Differences in understanding of risks by employers and employees are one of the factors leading to the hazardous work environment and risk exposures in small businesses. Employees generally describe “the tools of the trade” as the sources of risks of accidents and injuries, whereas employers generally identify “bad employees” or “bad luck” as the cause of accidents. It seems that employer and employees having the same or a shared understanding of occupational health and safety problems, their causal relations and the course of action is essential to remedy the work environment problems in the workplace. This paper describes a study that explores owner/managers’ and employees’ understandings of occupational health and safety risks in small business workplaces within the framework of the Local Theory of Work Environment. A case study of an independently operated restaurant and café in New Zealand employing 6­19 employees was undertaken.. Data was collected using participant­as­observer ethnographic observation of the workplace followed by semi structured interviews of the owner, a manager and more than fifty per cent of employees employed in the business. Preliminary findings based on interview data are reported in this paper. The results suggest that the owner/manager and employees mainly consider physical safety problems experienced by employees or food safety problems affecting the customers as the key work environment problems. The owner/manager and employees generally link common sense and breach of norms with the causal relation behind these problems. Social exchange and external certification, among others, are found to be prominent reasons for bringing to attention the perceived problems in the wider work environment context. Implicit individual element of action and explicit organizational element of action are recognised as the two courses of action remedying the occupational health and safety problems. Further studies can be directed at finding how a shared understanding of the OHS risks occurs and what influences this process

Large-Scale Numerical Modeling of Melt and Solution Crystal Growth

We present an overview of mathematical models and their large-scale numerical solution for simulating different phenomena and scales in melt and solution crystal growth. Samples of both classical analyses and state-of-the-art computations are presented. It is argued that the fundamental multi-scale nature of crystal growth precludes any one approach for modeling, rather successful crystal growth modeling relies on an artful blend of rigor and practicality

Variability of walking in able-bodied adults across different time intervals

This study aimed to quantify the variability of walking in young adults across measurement sessions held at varied time intervals. Inconsistent marker placement, a major source of variation in gait measurement, was minimized in this study in order to quantify how much variation is attributable to participants naturally altering their walking. Three-dimensional gait data were captured from five young adults on four sessions on each of four days. After Day 1, marker locations were identified with permanent pen to minimise variance due to inconsistent marker placement. A multi-level linear regression model was used to estimate intertrial and inter-session variance for two hour, within-day, across-a-day and across-a-week intervals. Inter-trial variation was relatively constant within sessions and ranged from a standard deviation (SD) of 0.7 degrees to 2.5 degrees. Inter-session variation differed across gait variables and time intervals, with a maximum variation of 2.4 degrees (hip rotation, across a week). Young adults varied their kinematic walking patterns (SD = 1-2 degrees) over intervals of 2 hours to 1 week. In reliability studies, variations of this magnitude may simply reflect natural or ‘intrinsic’ human variation rather than marker placement error