Open Data Accessibility Mechanisms for Tourism Development in South Africa

Abstract

Employment is a means of 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. Open Data has been proposed as a mechanism to promote tourism development but how that can be done has not been theorised. Applying Critical Realism as a research philosophy, this study seeks to identify potential causal mechanisms underlying open data accessibility and use towards sustainable tourism development. An exploratory qualitative case study and semi-structured interviews with 25 tourism information managers from the local government and private sector was used to collect data. Thematic Analysis was conducted in phase one of this study’s qualitative analysis. The 15 themes identified were then subjected to affordance-based causal analysis in phase two of the analysis. Three mechanisms (innovation, efficiency and marketing) linked to touristic open data access and use for digital platforms development were identified. This study contributes to the limited body of open data literature in the South African tourism context. The contribution to theory building lies in the causal mechanisms proposed as underlying open data accessibility and use in tourism.