Findings and Discussion

Potential demand for the Soshanguve tourism product

Central to this study was the quest to explore the co-relation between the unique tourist attractions in the Soshanguve Township and the tourism interests of visitors to the city of Tshwane’s CBD. In essence, the research sought to establish the extent to which the Soshanguve tourism product could complement the tourism potential of the City of Tshwane. To this end, the results of the statistical analysis revealed that the top five most preferred activities among visitors to the City of Tshwane CBD attractions are appreciating nature (87%), visiting historical places (80%), visiting cultural attractions (78%), visiting museums and galleries (77%) and appreciating architecture (75%). This finding was established by combining the percentages of the activities that the respondents rated as ‘very important’, and ‘important’. Details of the respondents’ individual rating of each activity as presented in Table 8.1 indicate that the activity with the highest incidences of ‘very important’ is visiting historical places (49%). This is followed by ‘appreciating nature’ at 45%, ‘visiting museums and galleries’ at 45%, ‘visiting cultural attractions’ at 43% and ‘sightseeing’ at 36%. On the other hand, the least preferred activities, with the highest rating on the ‘not important’ column are ‘hunting’ (29%), ‘hiking’ (28%), ‘fishing’ (27%), ‘drinking’ (26%), and ‘cycling’ and ‘horse riding’ at 25% each.

Given the large spectrum of interests displayed by the respondents, a factor analysis was further conducted on the data in order to arrive at the key underlining factors defining the respondents’ interests. This yielded the results displayed in Table 8.2, and for convenience reasons these are labelled as ‘adventure activities’, ‘cultural activities’, ‘nightlife activities’ and ‘passive activities’. The baseline characteristic defining the adventure theme is the desire to experience some adrenalin rush or

Table 8.1. Summary of visitors’ preferred holiday activities.

Note: Bold numbers indicate the most common response for each activity.

Table 8.2. Results of the factor analysis for preferred holiday activities among visitors.

Note: *Mean is based on a scale of 1-4, with 1 being ‘not important’ and 4 being ‘very important’ greater excitement, and such activities include cycling, hiking, horse riding, hunting, mountain climbing and swimming. On the other hand, the cultural theme is characterized by the desire for greater awareness and exposure to other people’s way of life commonly derived from visiting historical places, museums and admiring architecture. Nightlife activities can be associated with the longing for greater interaction, usually during night time. The Cronbach’s Alpha is acceptable, as all the coefficients are higher than 0.5. The inter-item correlation is even higher in this case and is therefore acceptable.

The factor ‘cultural activities’ had the highest mean value, with a rating of 3.15 out of 4. In other words, among the respondents, cultural activities were given the highest consideration. This should serve as a positive indicator for tourism planning and development for the Soshanguve community, considering the cultural bonanza readily available in the community. This study therefore considers cultural tourism as one of the unique selling points (USPs) that can serve as a link for the urban-rural tourism mix between the City of Tshwane CBD and Soshanguve.