A REVIEW OF DOMESTIC TOURISM RESILIENCE RESEARCH AGENDA IN AFRICA POST-COVID-19

Abstract

Tourism plays a significant role in the economies of many African countries (Bama and Nyikana, 2021). The COVID19 pandemic significantly impacted the tourism industry on a global scale (Gössling et al., 2021; Tung, 2021). In Africa, the pandemic propelled domestic tourism to the limelight as many destinations adopted it as a recovery strategy (Giddy and Rogerson, 2021; Mensah and Boakye, 2023; Soliku et al., 2021). Before the pandemic, most African countries relied on international tourism, which was viewed as more lucrative than its domestic counterpart (Emmy et al., 2023; Stone and Nyaupane, 2020). Among its many advantages, domestic tourism presents a more stable demand that is resilient to external threats (Setiawati, 2023; Xi and Xang, 2023). It is also known to aid in the geographical spread of tourism flows and economic benefits as domestic tourists explore remote and unknown areas in their country (World Travel Tourism Council, 2019). However, despite apparent benefits, domestic tourism in Africa is not research -driven and is often relegated to second place after international tourism (Kihima, 2015). It is often considered when international tourism faces a crisis rather than a significant segment (Matiza et al., 2022; Manono and Rotich, 2013). In support of this opinion, Aburumman et al. (2023) argued that African destinations mostly use domestic tourism to recover from declining international flows. As tourism destinations move beyond recovery from COVID-19, issues of resilience and sustainable growth emerge. While recovery is short-term and mainly focuses on regaining the market share, resilience is long-term (Hynes et al., 2022). It refers to the ability to withstand change or crisis by adapting or maintaining a position (Folke et al., 2010). Hall et al. (2017) proposed that tourism resilience can be viewed from an individual, organisational, or destination level. Prayag (2020) expanded this to describe the levels of tourism resilience as macro level (tourism system), meso level (tourism supply chain), and micro level (tourists, individual businesses and host communities). Some authors consider resilience an alternative development model to sustainability (Lew et al., 2016), while others consider it a complementary concept (Espiner et al., 2017). Sustainability in the context of tourism is the ability to balance social, economic and environmental concerns of tourism. It is important to note that COVID-19 is not the only crisis in tourism. In the past, the industry has faced other infectious disease outbreaks such as MERS, Ebola (Zhaowen et al., 2023), terror attacks (Novelli et al., 2018), climate change (Dube et al., 2023; Scott et al., 2019), cyclones (Nhamo and Dube, 2021), economic crisis (Bhakat et al., 2023), and war such as the Russia-Ukraine crisis (Kupika and Dube, 2023; OECD, 2022). These crises affect domestic tourism too, hence the significance of developing resilient and sustainable destinations informed by research. This study is a review paper that aims to pinpoint current research trends and identify potential research agendas for domestic tourism post covid. It also points out practical implications for the industry that can inform resilience-building and sustainability initiatives. The study is novel since previous reviews on African domestic tourism were conducted before 2020, leaving out the postCOVID-19 period. Past reviews were also country-specific country, hence missing out on a regional perspective. This research article is structured as follows: The first section is the introduction, followed by the research methodology. The next part describes the findings, followed by the section on discussion of the findings, while the last part provides a conclusion.