A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TRADITIONAL MEDIA AND ONLINE MEDIA IN THE PROMOTION OF TOURISM: THE CASE OF KWAZULU-NATAL

The advent of online media in tourism business has altogether revolutionised the whole system of performing business and brought about new ways of promoting tourism. Practitioners feared that traditional media had entered a death spiral and was no longer competitive in doing meaningful business. Others believed that traditional media was going to succumb to technology innovations that revolutionised the promotion industry. The purpose of this study is to make a comparative analysis of traditional media and online media as used for the promotion of tourism in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The study employed a mixed method research approach and questionnaire and self-administered interviews were the two research instruments employed to tourists and tourism authorities respectively. The findings revealed that though there has been a dramatic increase in the uptake of online media by tourists, there are people still inclined to traditional media use. Tourists and tourism marketers still rely on both traditional media and online media for their information needs. The appropriation effect of online media to traditional media is not complete, therefore, media displacement rather than media replacement has occurred. The two can actually co-exist while having a complimentary effect to each other. Tourism marketers should not, by any means, underestimate the role of traditional media in the promotion of tourism. On the other hand, online media emerged as a new media with better efficiency than traditional media on certain dimensions such as interactivity and ability to reach the global market. The study recommends that tourism marketers and authorities need to improve the uptake of the Internet and to be more innovative online, without neglecting the use of traditional media.