Making Gaborone a stop and not a stop-over : a heritage and cultural tourism destination

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to identify cultural heritage sites in and around Gaborone which could serve as tourist attractions. Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana, has been neglected in terms of tourism, although it has all the facilities needed to cater for this market. Very little information with regards to tourist attractions around Gaborone is available and therefore this study set out to identify relevant sites and discussed their history, relevance and potential for tourism. It also considers ways in which these sites can be developed in order to attract tourists. Due to its exclusive concentration on wildlife and the wilderness, tourism in Botswana tends to benefit only a few. Moreover, it is mainly concentrated in the north western region of the country, leaving out other parts of the country in terms of the tourism industry. To achieve the main objective of the study, which is to identify sites around the capital city Gaborone and to evaluate if indeed the sites have got the potential to become tourist attractions, three models have been used. They have been integrated to form a new composite model to apply to this study, namely: Du Cros’s “Market Appeal/Robusticity model”; Jamieson’s “challenges of heritage and cultural tourism”; and lastly Butler’s “Tourism area life cycle”.