Authors : Woudi von Solms and Madele Tait
Abstract: There are ongoing plans to grow the tourism industry. Development strategies offer guidelines as to how such growth might take place. Guidelines incorporate policies and targets while, at the same time, encouraging the tourism industry to remain sustainable and implement specific values. Geocaching is a real-life treasure hunting game where participants (geocachers) hide containers (geocaches) in noteworthy locations. These locations are communicated through their Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) coordinates and through clues posted on a website. Geocachers then enter the GPS coordinates into a mobile device and follow the directions to find the cache. Their success in finding the cache is logged by signing a logbook stored in the geocache (treasure chest) and recorded online. Through word-of mouth (face-to-face and online), geocaching has grown to become one of the world’s largest location-based gaming portals. In terms of growth and development, tourism and geocaching share similarities and these are the basis for this research paper. Four shared aspects were identified that relate to motive, rationale, values and environmental impact. Two research studies were conducted. The results indicate that there are similarities between geocaching and tourism in South Africa in their objectives, values and motivation for participation. The tourism industry can learn from Geocaching and vice versa.
Woudi von Solms and Madele Tait, 2016. Geocaching and Tourism: Treasured Similarities in South Africa. The Social Sciences, 11: 4405-4410.