Exploring Key Informants’ Perceptions of Environmental Issues in Durban Tourist Destination: Implications for Destination Marketing and Tourist Satisfaction

Environmental issues are important considerations for local and international tourists and deserve attention from destination authorities and leisure service providers. Environmental issues have caused problems for destination marketing officers, and tourism and hospitality service providers eliminating the desire for tourists to visit, revisit, and recommend to friends and relatives. Against this backdrop, the study explores environmental issues affecting Durban’s coastal destination from the key informants’ perspectives. The study also aims to unravel the implications of environmental issues on destination marketing and tourist satisfaction while suggesting possible mitigation and resilience strategies against such problems. The qualitative research method was adopted. Through interviews, data was collected from key informants in Durban. A total of 25 respondents were interviewed. The study found that there are environmental issues in Durban’s coastal destination that have the potential to damage the reputation and image of the resort destination including the presence of plastics and dirt on the beaches, the coastal destination is rated average, loss of biodiversity, ecosystem disturbance, ocean acidification that may affect marine life and tourism, sewage bursts, poor waste management, floods damaging the landscape and appeal of the environment and oil spillages at harbors. The study found that Durban is rated an average overall rating on environmental concerns, the negative environmental impact had negative implications on the coastal destination’s image and reputation including negative perceptions regarding perceived risk associated with the destinations from both local and international tourists with a net negative effect on reduced revenue which may affect the Gross Domestic Product of the nation. The study recommends resilient strategies that need to be adopted to reduce the physical environmental matters and to avert the negative perceptions from potential tourists that could arise following the different environmental concerns surrounding the coastal destination.