Sport and Tourism Destination Development: Hunting in South Africa c.1890-1939

Scholarship on sport and tourism can be enhanced by a tighter engagement with historical research. The novel contribution of this paper is to document the role of the sport of hunting as a niche for early tourism destination development using the case of South Africa. Beginning in the 1890s hunting as a form of consumptive wildlife tourism was promoted in South Africa mainly to British sports hunters. This form of tourism development in South Africa was only made possible following the restrictions introduced in the country both to regulate hunting and enact conservation measures to protect wildlife following the decimation of animal populations in previous years. It is argued hunting was only a small niche in the emergence of tourism in South Africa during the period 1890 to 1940. Nevertheless, for certain regions of the country the hunting of wildlife for sport constituted a significant element of the local tourism economy.