For years, heritage tourism meant looking at history behind glass, walking through museum corridors, photographing stone monuments, and listening to canned speeches.
But today’s travellers are demanding more than a passive postcard moment. They want to taste local flavours, hear native languages, and participate in living traditions.
In South Africa, where culture is vibrant and actively lived every day, an immersive shift is transforming how tourists connect with destinations. This shift proves that the country's rich history is best experienced inside the community rather than off a shelf.
Mzansi has plenty to offer. The country recorded an estimated 10.5 million international tourist arrivals in 2025, surpassing its pre-pandemic 2019 figures, according to South African Tourism.
As the tourism market grows, the question is no longer simply how to attract more people, but what they do once they arrive.
Lisa Sebogodi, director at Batsumi Travel, says travellers are increasingly seeking personal and meaningful experiences.
“It is no longer enough for people to simply take a photograph at a landmark and move on to the next attraction,” she says. “They want to understand the people, culture, food and history behind the destination.”
Culture becomes the experience
Evidence shows culture already plays a significant role in South Africa’s tourism proposition.
South African Tourism’s 2025 Brand Tracker found that 39% of travellers cited experiencing a different culture as a primary motivation for choosing South Africa - placing culture behind beautiful scenery (50%), but ahead of safaris (37%).
This suggests that culture is not simply something tourists encounter incidentally while travelling through South Africa. For a significant proportion, it is part of the reason for choosing the destination.
For Sebogodi, the country’s main advantage is that much of this heritage remains active. “Our greatest strength is that our heritage is not only something that sits behind glass in a museum. It is still being lived,” she says.
Food, language, music, crafts, traditions and stories remain connected to communities today, allowing visitors to understand South Africa through the people who live here.
That distinction is important. A museum can preserve an object. A heritage site can document an event. But an immersive experience can connect visitors with the people who continue to carry that knowledge.
“A heritage site can tell you what happened,” Sebogodi says, “but a local guide, community member, cultural practitioner or storyteller can help you understand what that history means to people today.”
The food on the other side of the postcard
Nowhere is this shift toward living history clearer than at the dining table. Food isn't just sustenance; it’s a living timeline revealing centuries of trade, migration, and cultural blend.
According to Dr Gareth Haysom, an urban food systems researcher at the University of Cape Town's African Centre for Cities, travellers are increasingly trading packaged restaurant meals for authentic cultural connection.
Cooking classes, food tours, and neighbourhood tastings serve as vital means of preserving heritage. Demand within the country is already substantial, with Statistics South Africa's Domestic Tourism Survey highlighting that eating out is the primary activity on 37.7% of local day trips.
The true opportunity lies in taking tourists past the plate, turning a simple meal into the story behind it.
A domestic appetite for heritage
Immersive heritage travel is also not solely an international tourism opportunity.
South Africans themselves are increasingly travelling within their own country, with Stats SA recording 33.5 million domestic day trips and 26.2 million overnight trips in 2024.
Domestic travel generated approximately R60.6 billion in expenditure that year.
For Sebogodi, that creates an opportunity for South Africans to discover histories and cultures they may not have encountered before.
Some travellers may be interested in exploring their ancestral histories, while others may simply want to learn about communities and traditions outside their own experiences.
“Heritage travel can therefore become both a tourism experience and a way of understanding ourselves better as South Africans,” she says.
It also fits into a wider movement towards travelling more slowly and intentionally.
Rather than rushing between attractions, visitors can spend longer in a destination, taking scenic routes, stopping at local producers, visiting community businesses, eating local food and staying overnight.
The journey becomes part of the destination.
Can immersive travel spread the tourism brand?
There is a potentially significant economic dimension to this shift.
Immersive tourism does not necessarily require a large hotel or international tour operator to deliver the experience.
A local guide, artisan, food producer, cultural practitioner, community-owned business or small accommodation provider can all form part of the tourism chain.
“When travellers spend money across that wider network, more of the value of tourism can reach the communities where the experience takes place,” Sebogodi adds.
That could be particularly important for rural and community-based tourism businesses that lack the marketing budgets of major operators.
Their competitive advantage, Sebogodi argues, can instead be something genuine and distinctive.
The challenge is connecting those businesses with travellers and making their experiences easy to find, book and incorporate into wider itineraries.
The scale of the opportunity is reflected in the wider tourism economy. Stats SA estimates that internal tourism expenditure reached R779.2 billion in 2024, with domestic travel accounting for 85% of that amount.
The question is how much of that spending can be channelled towards the smaller businesses and communities that help create the experiences tourists increasingly want.
Authenticity comes with responsibility
But immersive travel also raises an uncomfortable question: who gets to decide what is authentic?
The commercial appetite for indigenous and cultural experiences can create opportunities, but it can also risk turning sacred traditions into products designed around tourist expectations.
Sebogodi believes authenticity must come with respect.
“Not every cultural practice should automatically become a tourism product,” she says, pointing to traditions, spaces and ceremonies that should remain protected.
Communities, she argues, should have a say in deciding what is shared, how it is shared and how they benefit.
That principle applies equally to food. Culinary traditions are not static museum pieces. They evolve, adapt and differ between communities and generations.
The challenge is ensuring that the people who hold that knowledge retain agency over how it is presented and are fairly compensated when their knowledge, labour and culture become part of a tourism experience.
Beyond the big attractions
South Africa is primed for experiential travel. We already have the world-class landscapes, wildlife, deep histories, and vibrant cultures. The real opportunity lies in connecting them.
Industry leaders like Sebogodi argue the sector must look beyond simply dropping tourists at Table Mountain, Kruger, or the Winelands.
It’s about building the narrative around those stops, pairing a wildlife safari with an Indigenous foraging experience, or following a historic monument tour with a community-led tasting.
The next era of heritage tourism isn't about building new attractions; it’s about connecting people to the living stories behind the ones that already exist.
Tourists will always want the photo, but they increasingly crave the meal with a backstory, the local guide who grew up on those streets, and the artisan sharing an ancestral craft. South Africa doesn't need to manufacture living heritage - it’s already here.
The goal now is to share it responsibly, ensuring the communities keeping these traditions alive hold a real economic stake in the journey.
As Sebogodi puts it, “The postcard can get someone here. The story can make them stay longer, travel further and connect more deeply with the country.”
zamandosi.cele@nationalmg.co.za | lutho.pasiya@nationalmg.co.za