Mainstreaming Guesthouses: Reflections on the Evolution of South Africa’s First Alternative Tourist Accommodation Sector

Abstract

Accommodation is a critically important component of the tourist’s experience of a destination. Tourist accommodation ranges from the formal hotel to the potential informality of second homes, Airbnb and home-stay accommodation. This chapter focuses on South African guesthouses as a tourist accommodation type that made its appearance in the late 1980s as a largely unregulated alternative to hotels. In terms of South African guesthouses, the first investigations were concerned with the general geography of guesthouses, the characteristics of their facilities and services, as well as the profiles of the owner and visitor. Since then, the development of guesthouses, certainly from a spatial perspective, has slipped from the scholarly gaze. The aim of this investigation is to track the subsequent development of guesthouses, which started as an alternative tourist accommodation type in the Stellenbosch Winelands. Duplicating the aims of the earlier studies, the expanding spatial footprint of this accommodation type is of particular interest as there appears to be considerable expansion into agricultural areas and consolidation of dense guesthouse accommodation in the urban areas. Conceptually, the paper questions the utility of the ‘alternative tourist accommodation’ category. It is argued that alternative tourist accommodation is very fluid in its meaning over time and what is seen as alternative now can be mainstream later.