Agricultural Economics Services: Macro and Resource Economics – March 2019
Executive Summary
The purpose of this report is to contribute to South African route agritourism literature to enable greater adoption of agritourism. Agritourism presents an economic diversification strategy for agriculture and a vehicle to promote rural development. Agritourism offers benefits for production of food and employment, preserving local culture and protecting environmental assets.
The development of route tourism presents an opportunity to sustainably grow South Africa’s agritourism, leveraging the strengths of collective marketing of offerings. Clustering tourism activities provide benefits of the expansion of agritourism markets and average length of stay; offering wider variety of activities and distributing economic benefits across a larger spatial area.
Since little is known on the potential application and success of applying route tourism to agritourism in South Africa, this exploratory study aims to contribute to route agritourism literature, to greater adoption thereof. The study’s specific objectives are to identify factors motivating decision to start an agritourism business as a diversification strategy and factors that determine success of route agritourism.
The study adopted a mixed method approach combining desktop literature review, internal information from the recent Flyover Project [ CITATION Fly18 \l 7177 ] and an online survey.
The key findings from the online survey on levels of awareness, knowledge, barriers and motivating factors are presented in the chapters that follow. The survey is attached as Appendix 1.
The research findings confirm that farmers acknowledge the benefits of agritourism. Farmers are interested in diversifying their operations and increasing revenue by expanding their operations to include agritourism but face numerous challenges. Whilst respondents perceive route tourism as an opportunity to leverage agritourism, more research and awareness is required.
DISCLAIMER: This document and its contents have been compiled by the Western Cape Department of Agriculture (WCDoA) and the Worldwide Fund for Nature South Africa (WWF-SA) for the purpose of agritourism research. The views expressed in this document are the views of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Western Cape Government or Worldwide Fund for Nature South Africa. Anyone who uses this information does so at his/her own risk. The WCDoA, WWF-SA and the author(s) therefore accept no liability for losses incurred resulting from the use of this information.
Written by Jacqui Taylor.
Trademark Rural Tourism Africa @2018/18246. All Rights Reserved. Not for replication or distribution in any form.
Agritourism broadly incorporates unique tourist activities on a working farm that are linked to the farm’s activities and attractions. These
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