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15/01/2015

Xiliang Han was one of ten doctoral candidates who obtained their doctorates on Tuesday, 9 December 2014, at NMMU’s first summer graduation. Professor Laetitia Radder was his promoter. He utilised an extended model of planned behaviour to predict Chinese tourists' intentions of traveling around South Africa. Xiliang's promoter was Professor Laetitia Radder. Professor Radder was in Germany at the time of the graduation, so Professor Tait read Xiliang's citation during the graduation ceremony.

The topic of his thesis was: CHINESE TOURISTS’ INTENTIONS TO VISIT SOUTH AFRICA: AN EXTENDED MODEL OF THE THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOUR

South Africa recently initiated the National Tourism Sector Strategy aimed at developing a sustainable tourism economy and making the country a Top 20 global tourism destination by 2020. China is one of the major outbound-tourist-generating countries in the world and is also one of South Africa’s major non-African sources of tourist arrivals.

This thesis makes an important contribution to the literature on travel destination choice and provides South Africa’s destination marketers with useable suggestions for attracting and serving Chinese tourists.     

Pictured with Dr Han is Professor Niekie Dorfling, Executive Dean of Business and Economic Sciences and Professor Madele Tait.