Abstract
The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is one of South Africa’s unique attractions for national and international tourists. However, little research has been done on visitors to transfrontier parks. In addition marketers highlight the importance of understanding the reasons why people travel and who these tourists are. Therefore the aim of this article is to segment the market of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park by means of visitors’ travel motives. This was achieved by means of a survey. In the statistical analysis, 414 questionnaires were used and the survey was conducted from 2010 to 2012. The statistical analysis included a factor analysis and ANOVA. Four factors were identified through the factor analysis namely escape, education and recreation, park attributes and exploration. The latter was unique to this research since it has not been found in other studies. The ANOVA confirmed that a wide variety of variables influence the decision-making process and that the marketing strategy should focus on different methods and events to attract a greater market.
Highlights
Africa’s reserves and national parks are main attractions drawing international tourists to the continent
The factor analysis (Pattern Matrix) of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park identified four factors accounted for 62.5% of the total variance (Table 3)
Tourists who are travelling to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park are in the first place motivated to get away from their every-day routine and to relax
Summary
Africa’s reserves and national parks are main attractions drawing international tourists to the continent. The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is one of such areas, which is an amalgamation of South Africa’s former Kalahari Gemsbok National Park and Botswana’s Gemsbok National Park (SANParks, 2012:2). With the official opening of the park on the 12th May 2000 it represents the first formally declared transfrontier park in Africa (SANParks, 2012:2) that aims at returning ecosystems into their natural state by overcoming political borders (Hanks, 2003:127). The combined land area comprises about 38,000 km (SAvenues, 2012) which is nearly twice the size of the Kruger National Park (see Map 1). Competition is increasing and understanding tourist’s reasons for visiting becomes more important in developing successful nature-based products
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