A profile of tourists visiting the Kruger National Park

Abstract

Due to shrinking budgets for conservation and an increase in the number of government and privately owned parks, it has become very important for parks to determine who the tourists are who visit one of South Africa’s top tourist attractions. The reason for this is that park management and marketers need to focus their efforts to optimise their limited resources. This can only be done once there is a clear understanding of who the market is, where they come from and what they expect. The literature study clearly showed that market segmentation is essential for the effective marketing of a tourism product or destination. Two surveys were conducted, one in 2001 and a follow-up study in 2002, profiling tourists to the Kruger National Park. Different months were chosen to conduct the two surveys in order to get a more comprehensive profile of tourists visiting the park in different seasons.