Exploring the Politics of Place Marketing-The Case of South Africa

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that generate conflict between local, provincial and national tourism authorities and tourism industry stakeholders in the process of place marketing. South-Africa, Western Cape and Cape Town form the basis of a case study that explores stakeholders perceptions of these politicking conflicts. In-depth interviews with 58 stakeholders using a phenomenological approach were used to identify pertinent themes in the data. The findings indicate the existence of four broad themes in the data: defining destination product, marketing awareness, brand associations and marketing channels. For example, the first theme relates to conflicts in the way the product is defined for marketing purposes. The findings are limited to South Africa as a tourist destination but the broad themes identified can be related to other destinations as well. The use of a qualitative approach requires credibility of interpretation, which was achieved by triangulation of findings with the literature.