Mobile devices in SA tourism industry

Prof Berendien Lubbe, Head of the Tourism Management Division and Dr Anneli Douglas, a staff member in the Division, found that only a limited number of visitors have used a mobile application before to make an accommodation booking.

While it has been predicted by a number of industry sources that the use of mobile devices will quickly overtake the use of desktops for travel-related activities such as bookings, the results of the project survey showed that only 13% of respondents had used the SANParks mobile website before and a further 13% stated that they had previously made use of a mobile application to make an accommodation booking.

The research project was conducted through a paper- and web-based survey of past visitors to SANParks. The results were presented by Dr Douglas at the 21^th annual ENTER conference that was held in Dublin, Ireland during January 2014. The conference was organised by the International Federation for Information Technologies in Travel and Tourism (IFITT), which is the leading independent global community for the discussion, exchange and development of knowledge about the use and impact of new information and communication technologies (ICT) in the travel and tourism industry. The conference paper will be included in the conference proceedings.