The intersection of tourism and climate change has seen significant research over the past two decades, focusing particularly on issues of mitigation and adaptation in the global North. Research output has predominantly been centred on the Mediterranean and Nordic countries and number of localities in North America. The global South has seen significantly less investigation, despite having significantly lower adaptive capacity to the impacts of climate change, and numerous countries with rapidly growing tourism sectors. The African continent specifically has seen appreciably less research than other countries in the global South, despite arguably having the lowest adaptive capacity and projections of severe impacts of climate change to the tourism sector from temperature increases, changes in precipitation volume and sea level rise. This paper therefore presents a review of the existing literature on adaptation strategies of tourism sectors and participants in African countries. The crucial argument of this paper is in highlighting the need for an increase in research into the threats of climate change to tourism in African countries, identifying future research trajectories. The development of such knowledge would assist in the development of adaptation and mitigation strategies for these most vulnerable tourism economies.

Terry Coppock's (1977c) edited collection, Second homes: Curse or blessing? (Oxford: Pergamon) remains the most influential work investigating second-home tourism. Coppock's edited collection explored second-home tourism in a variety of locations globally. Different themes were studied in the collection, which includes planning aspects of second-home development, spatial modelling and predictive modelling and second homes as holiday accommodation (to name but three). Over the last 30 years, second-home research has blossomed, especially since the mid-1990s. Thus, we found it fitting to review the marked influence of this edited collection 30 years after the first conference was held that formed the basis of this book. Therefore, this article will investigate the relevance of the issues identified during the 1970s to issues surrounding present-day second-home tourism. The argument made in this article is that many of the issues that Coppock identified remain important today; however, many of the issues identified are less relevant to many second-home landscapes in both the developed and developing worlds.

Tourism Climate Indices (TCIs) have been used extensively in the global North to quantify the climatic suitability of tourist destinations. TCIs have very seldom been applied in the global South. This gap in the literature is significant, due to the considerable growth that tourism sectors in the global South have experienced over recent decades. Moreover, many of these countries seldom have the infrastructure to modify indoor climates and effectively mitigate against poor weather. We present TCI results for 18 tourist destinations across South Africa. With mean annual TCI scores for the period 1995–2015 spanning 76.5 for Port Nolloth to 93 for the Pilansberg, the comparatively favourable climatic conditions in South Africa relative to much of Europe and North America is confirmed. There is distinct seasonality in TCI scores for the majority of study locations, yet the dichotomy between the South African summer and rainfall zones ensure a net balance in climatic suitability countrywide year-round. Time trends in TCI scores over recent decades indicate non-significant change for the majority of locations, and all significant trends indicate slight improvements in the climatic suitability for tourism. These results present a promising outlook of sustained climatic suitability of the region for tourism.

Local economic development (LED) is receiving greater policy prominence in a range of southern African settings. Strategic interventions often draw on tourism development to attain LED objectives. This investigation contends that second home development can serve as an additional focus for tourism strategies aimed at LED, and demonstrates that important LED objectives, such as developing and maintaining enterprises, generating employment and attracting capital inflows, can be achieved through second home development.

The landfall of Tropical Storm Dando resulted in a severe flood event in the Lowveld region of the Limpopo Province in South Africa from 17 to 19 January 2012, with over 500 mm of rainfall recorded over a 24-hour period. The Mopani District Municipality declared a local state of disaster following these floods. Interviews conducted with 24 lodges and conservation establishments indicate a total direct cost of R58.92 million, ‘costs’ of loss of business of R4.230 million, and an increase in long-term expenses, including insurance, adaptation and mitigation, of R458 600. Due to the low response rate, the economic damage to the tourism sector exceeds that of the 42 farms and 11 local businesses interviewed. Damage ranged from the loss of household contents to the complete destruction of all buildings on the property. The capacity for tourism establishments to recover from the floods depended primarily on the type and value of their insurance. Additional strain was placed on tourism establishments through the damage to roads, poor water supply during the floods, the removal of trees, and a loss of the aesthetic quality of the region. This case study provides a valuable insight into the nature and severity of the impacts of floods on the South African tourism sector, and contributes to projecting impacts of global climate change on tourism in developing countries.

Rural geographies have changed significantly over the past half century. These reconfigured geographies are increasingly denoted as evolving from a productivist to a post-productivist state and second home development has increasingly been implicated as contributing to such change. This paper considers this contention in the context of Rhodes, South Africa. It is argued that second home development is contributing towards an emerging post-productivist countryside. A broad analysis of the impact of second home ownership is given with reference to its economic influence. The paper concludes that coinciding with the post- productivist changes in the Rhodes countryside, second home ownership has contributed to employment creation and has had a varied tourism and regional impact which has added much needed support to the economy of the town.