the databases of tourism business registered with the tourism authorities of the Western Cape KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape were obtained. in the case of the eastern Cape the databases was supplemented by the databases of the tourism authorities of Buffalo city, Nelson Mandela Metropolis and the Wild Coast, as there was no integration of these various databases. these databases were used to elicit the contact details of those small tourism businesses with websites, which were used as the qualifying criterion to define those tourism businesses that qualify as small businesses. Consequently, a small businesses for the purposes of this research is defined as any enter prise that has 100 or fewer employees and is independently owned. the population of the study was the databases of the various tourism authorities described above and implies the use of a convenience sampling technique.