The Role of Ethnic Marketing in the Promotion of Domestic Leisure Tourism in Johannesburg

The study looks at ethnic marketing strategies in relation to domestic leisure tourism promotion and evaluates the effectiveness of this approach. The study also provides some insight into the perspective of ethnic consumers towards ethnic marketing initiatives. A mixed methods approach was used during the study with the qualitative component involving structured interviews with key marketing stakeholders involved in promoting domestic leisure tourism in Johannesburg. For the quantitative phase, data was collected using questionnaire surveys from a sample of 200 black South Africans at a popular leisure tourism site, namely Gold Reef City in Johannesburg. The findings show that most marketers refrain from using ethnic marketing initiatives when promoting domestic tourism. Further findings reveal that ethnic marketing has not had a notable effect in motivating black South Africans to engage in domestic leisure tourism. However, the ethnic consumers surveyed indicated a willingness to travel more should marketers opt to promote domestic leisure tourism using indigenous South African languages. Tourism marketers in a multicultural market can translate marketing campaigns into various ethnic languages in order to appeal to a broader consumer population and simultaneously target an important market segment, namely the ethnic consumer. Globally, there has been an uptake in ethnic marketing as many marketers realized that treating various ethnic groups as a homogeneous group resulted in the loss of many opportunities. There is still however, limited empirical research focusing on the ethnic marketing discourse particularly in relation to tourism promotion and the study offers some insight into the knowledge gap that currently exists.