Bala, van Biljon, Herselman & Plantinga

Open Data Accessibility Mechanisms for Sustainable Tourism Development in South Africa

Employment is an important factor in addressing the socio-economic developmental challenges of inequality and poverty. In South Africa, tourism has been identified as an important sector for creating employment and various initiatives are being investigated to support the tourism sector. The purpose of this study is to provide potential causal mechanisms underlying open data accessibility in support of the South African tourism sector towards sustainable tourism development. Critical Realism was found appropriate as research philosophy for guiding the non-deterministic view on causality where an exploratory case study will be used to collect data for describing potential causal mechanisms underlying the adoption of open data access in the South African tourism sector. That includes quantitative analysis of the South African open data sources on tourism information as well as qualitative analysis of interviews with tourism information managers from the local government and private sectors. This study will not only contribute to the body of open data literature in South African context particularly in the travel and tourism domain, but it could also be used to inform policy development on open data.