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THE FREE STATE TOURISM ECONOMY: CURRENT DYNAMICS, IMMEDIATE CHALLENGES AND FUTURE RESEARCH PROSPECTS

ABSTRACT In South Africa, tourism development has become a critical site for government interventions through a range of policy frameworks and supporting institutions. Increasingly, these interventions are reflected in provincial governments' development planning frameworks. As tourism development has gained prominence at the regional level, a growing body of research focused on major tourist destination areas such as Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape has developed. This has facilitated the development of a further round of informed policy frameworks and institutional support systems. However, regions such as the Free State lack even the most basic analyses of its tourism products and product providers to inform the development of appropriate policy frameworks and institutional support systems. The aim of this paper is to address the paucity of regional data concerning the Free State tourism system by providing baseline data of the main tourism products and product providers of this province.