A Locality Based Approach to Tourism : The Development of an Appropriate Planning Framework for the Durban Central Beachfront Tourism Locality

Tourism is a large and growing industry and many cities have pursued strategies aimed at earning foreign revenue by packaging local spaces and culture for consumption by tourists. In geography the key elements in the tourism system include tourist generating areas, receiving destinations, transit routes and people as visitors and hosts. This study looks at tourist destinations and argues that while destinations occur at various scales, some cities develop particular localities which become predominately used for the purposes of tourism and develops a unique identity. It uses the geography of place to define these areas as tourism localities and further focuses on urban beach tourist localities. It uses the resort lifecycle model to describe its development and decline. The work looks at the case study of the Durban Central Beachfront. It recognises that localities are moulded by a range of forces such as politics, economics, globalisation, stakeholders as well as people who interpret the locality and suggests a wholistic framework.This work is relevant to tourism researches; manages and those involved in tourism development.