Digitalisation and Technological Integration for Sustainable Tourism in South Africa

Sustainable tourism is tourism businesses that are economically viable without destroying the physical environment and the social fabric of the host community. One method widely proposed to boost sustainability is adopting and integrating digital technologies. However, studies that provide a detailed picture of digitalisation and technology integration focusing on sustainability in the tourism industry are either scant or embryonic. This study aims to close this knowledge gap by examining how digitalisation is being adopted and integrated to meet sustainable tourism in South African tourism and hospitality enterprises. Using the critical document approach augmented by abstraction, the study explores how digitalisation is helping South African tourism enterprises to satisfy sustainable tourism principles. The chapter shows that most technologies adopted and integrated by enterprises mainly serve to respond to the economic dimension and, to a lesser extent, environmental concerns. It concludes that tourism enterprises in South Africa rarely adopt digital technologies to respond to social and cultural concerns but to boost their visibility (through marketing), improve products and services, and minimise operation costs. This tendency flags ‘sustainable tourism’ as a capitalist discourse in which capital accumulation precedes environmental and socio-cultural domains. The study also revealed that research on digitalisation for sustainable tourism is limited in South Africa. Future research should cover this apparent gap in the literature.