Tourism is a very important economic and social element in southern Africa. Although tourism and its developmental nature are always polarised, the impacts of tourism are relatively widely spread in the region. New places are constantly introduced to tourism, and the existing destinations and attractions are modified and further developed in order to satisfy the needs of growing numbers of international as well as evolving domestic tourists. As a result, tourism has become a major economic driver in the region with broad scale of benefits ranging from additional incomes and employment, improved public infrastructures, facilities and services, new incoming investments and increased possibilities for entrepreneurship and more international business environments and contacts, for example. Tourism has also a wide range of other kinds of evident or potential impacts on environment, economy, people and their everyday life and cultures. This has highlighted the role of sustainability in tourism. The issue of sustainable development and thinking the impacts and changes proactively are important in southern Africa, where the attractiveness of natural and traditional cultural environments, which are sensitive to the changes caused by poorly managed and controlled tourism, plays the key role in tourism and its future prospects in the region.

With the increasing role of the tourism industry in southern Africa, the need to research and study tourism, its developmental nature and impacts has been emphasised recently. During the past few years, the research input has increased, and also educational programmes and courses have evolved in tourism and related fields. In the region, the first dedicated Department of Tourism Management was established at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in 1997. Most probably the youngest university level unit, the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management, was established at the University of Botswana (UB) in 2009.