Urban tourism has come under the spotlight following UN Tourism and the World Tourism Cities Federation’s (WTCF) report highlighting the need to measure the social and environmental impact of tourism on city destinations.
The report assesses the current situation and challenges of the collection of tourism data at a city level. The analysis will help to create a global database of urban tourism, enabling better understanding and benchmarking of the sector’s size and value, both globally and regionally.
Tourism Update spoke with South African urban tourism stakeholders to determine how the destinations measured their social and environmental impact, the size and value of their urban tourism sector, and how they collected tourism data.
Measuring social and environmental impact
The eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, which includes the city of Durban and surrounding towns in KwaZulu Natal, said it measured its social impact through perception studies and visitor marketing…
