As part of an ongoing commissioned project, Professor Karen Harris and CR Botha of the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies at the University of Pretoria (UP) recently piloted the Domestic Tourism Remodelling Model (DTRM) in the Northern Cape to reinvigorate the province’s domestic tourism market.

The model was launched in three Northern Cape destinations – Upington, Rietfontein and Askham – by way of five narrative-induced workshops. Through these participatory workshops, UP researchers engaged with community stakeholders and role players from all walks of life on the benefits of domestic tourism and how the DTRM can elevate their local travel offerings by embracing experiences that involve multicultural as well as sensorial elements.

The DTRM is part of two phased research projects commissioned by the national Department of Tourism, entitled ‘Reimagining the local domestic tourism market in South Africa within a COVID-19 environment’ (2021 – 2022) and ‘The piloting and refining of the Domestic Tourism Remodelling Model’ (2022 – 2023).  

The  workshops underscored the need for bottom-up sustainable development approaches within the South African domestic tourism market, where grassroots community “voices” have to create tourism products for the national market, thereby overcoming dependence on institutional bodies for assistance.

The workshops were a huge success and garnered much praise, with participants applauding the DTRM as the “next best thing in domestic tourism” – this as communities, especially those in rural areas, mitigate the post-COVID-19 travel landscape and national socio-economic hardships.

The participants stated that the DTRM was a positive growth model that would prompt actual change at a grassroots level and reinvigorate the domestic tourism market and its associated products across all nine South African provinces.

Use the following link to access the research projects: https://tkp.tourism.gov.za/ResearchRepo/Publications/Pages/Reports.aspx