COVID-19 and tourism spaces of vulnerability in South Africa

The COVID-19 pandemic will exert a devastating and destructive impact on the South African tourism economy with its ramifications felt countrywide. Nevertheless, the negative local impacts of the pandemic will be particularly harsh for those parts of South Africa where tourism is a critical sector in the local economy. The objective in this article is to identify the tourism spaces of vulnerability in South Africa. Use is made of the IHS Global Insight data base for 2016 to analyse at a local authority scale the most vulnerable localities to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Indicators used to isolate tourism spaces of vulnerability are total tourism spend; tourism spend as a proportion of local GDP; domestic and international tourism (trips and bednights); and, leisure, business and VFR (visiting friends and relatives) travel. The analysis discloses those local authorities that are the most vulnerable to the downturn/collapse of tourism as a whole as well as to the hollowing out of specific forms of tourism, namely domestic as opposed to international travel, leisure as opposed to business or VFR travel.