Tourist motives and behavioural intentions towards Bawa Falls in Butterworth, South Africa: Recommendations for rural tourism development

As rural communities diversify their economies, rural tourism development is at the centre of the shift away from predominantly agricultural communities. Through tour­ism, communities benefit from infrastructural development, conservation of cultural and natural resources, as well as job creation, while tourists experience different cultures and inter­act with community members. There are tourist-related fac­tors that drive tourists to destinations (push factors) and des­tination-related factors that lure tourists to specific locations (pull factors), both of which are important for the competitive­ness and success of the destination. Studies have primarily focused on rural tourism as a strategy for economic development, the challenges faced, and the various role players involved in this development. This study aimed to understand the motives and behavioural in­tentions of rural tourists, as well as to ascertain destination at­tributes from the tourists’ perspective. The study employed qualitative approach, distributing a self-administered open-ended questionnaire via Facebook and WhatsApp groups to tourists who visited Butterworth, Eastern Cape Province, a local municipality in South Africa. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were utilised to obtain data, and the results reveal that tourists were more driven by destination attribute motives than by internal factors. Destination attrib­utes such as infrastructure and accessibility were portrayed negatively by respondents. The study also found that the attraction appears to be abandoned. This indicates a need for efforts to focus on im­proving and maintaining destination attributes, as they contribute to tourists’ perceptions and satis­faction.