Clear waters: assessing regulation transparency of website advertising in South Africa's boat-based whale-watching industry

Long-term sustainability of South Africa's boat-based whale-watching (BBWW) industry requires any desired growth to be achieved within sustainable parameters. Given that advertising is often the first point of exposure for potential tourists, transparency regarding permit regulations that support sustainable tourism and manage tourist expectations is important. To assess transparency, textual information and photographic content from 17 South African government permitted BBWW company websites were analysed. Regulation-related information in textual content was low across all websites (5-28% of sentences extracted); 91% of photographs containing whales, and 55% containing dolphins, appeared non-compliant for distance of vessel to animal. These results demonstrate that misleading advertising may result in tourist expectations that conflict with legal requirements for a sustainable industry and can place operators under pressure to provide the experiences as advertised. Solutions to address this problem and promote ecological sustainability in the industry include clearer advertising guidelines in permit regulations, standardised resources supplied to industry for advertising and tourist education, and greater awareness of advertising effects and how to positively promote regulations in website content.

Automated summary

The long-term sustainability of South Africa's boat-based whale-watching industry requires transparency and compliance in advertising. Research findings suggest that most websites do not fully comply with regulations in textual and photographic content, potentially leading to mismatched tourist expectations and experiences.