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Apartheid Hotels: The Rise and Fall of the ‘Non-white’ Hotel in South Africa

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New Directions in South African Tourism Geographies

Part of the book series: Geographies of Tourism and Global Change ((GTGC))

Abstract

In tourism geographical scholarship there is a neglect of historical research. Against this backcloth, the chapter addresses the underdevelopment of research concerning tourism geographies of the past for South Africa. The research focus is the evolution of the ‘non-White’ hotel an institution which offered accommodation services to racial groups denied access to the country’s exclusive ‘White’ hotels. The emergence of the ‘non-White hotel’ is inseparable from national government’s application of apartheid racial legislation to the hotel sector and at a particular time of the growth of leisure and business mobilities among segments of the country’s Coloured, Indian and African communities. The normalisation of hotels in South Africa was a phased process beginning in 1971 with the establishment of the country’s multi-racial airport hotel as an experiment in racially mixed hotel space. It moved towards the stage of approving ‘international hotels’ before moving to the opening in 1986 of the formerly exclusive ‘White’ hotel spaces to all races. This event ultimately undermined the competitiveness and the raison d’ȇtre for racially exclusive ‘non-White’ hotels in apartheid South Africa.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It is unfortunately necessary throughout the discussion in this chapter that recourse is made to use the language of apartheid and its racial categorisations. In this chapter, the term ‘non-Whites’ is a derogatory term which refers collectively to the country’s designated African, Coloured and Indian communities. The term ‘non-White’ is acknowledged as signifying exclusion and negates those who are not ‘White’. It represents normalisation of ‘whiteness’ such that those individuals not falling into that category are viewed as ‘something else’ as they are bereft of ‘whiteness’.

  2. 2.

    I am grateful to Manfred Spocter, University of Stellenbosch for drawing my attention to this reference and to the experience of the Karoo Kleurling Hotel in Beaufort West.

  3. 3.

    From the mid-1970s there is an unfortunate trend in the press to use the term ‘blacks’ both to refer collectively to these racial groups which are ‘non-White’ and also at other times to confine the term to only Africans as Blacks.

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Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks go to two anonymous reviewers for the detailed and carefully crafted set of comments which I received and assisted greatly in the revision of this chapter.

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  1. School of Tourism and Hospitality, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Christian M. Rogerson

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  1. Christian M. Rogerson
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Correspondence to Christian M. Rogerson .

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  1. University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Jayne M. Rogerson

  2. Stellenbosch University , Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Gustav Visser

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Rogerson, C.M. (2020). Apartheid Hotels: The Rise and Fall of the ‘Non-white’ Hotel in South Africa. In: Rogerson, J., Visser, G. (eds) New Directions in South African Tourism Geographies. Geographies of Tourism and Global Change. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29377-2_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29377-2_3

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