The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has adopted tourism as one of the main vehicles for promoting economic integration within Southern Africa, an approach referred to in the study as 'tourism integration '. Using a critical realist approach, the research investigates the political , economic and social context within which tourism integration has evolved and elicits stakeholder perceptions and attitudes towards the strategy. The study involved three field research visits to Southern Africa over the period 2000 to 2006, intended to find out how the strategy manifests in several areas of economic integration. The findings and recommendations are based on field research on the education and training sector and the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP). The research finds that 'tourism integration' has been prompted by a combination of political, economic and social developments at international, regional and national levels and the study also shows that the strategy faces many challenges including, the large size of the region, asymmetric economies at different levels of economic development, lack of political will among the ruling elite ; limited resources and lack of widespread stakeholder participation in policy processes. From this, the research develops a framework for examining the process of tourism in general and concludes that although SADC has been highly imaginative regarding policy formulation, but this has not been matched in practice since, by the end of 2006, many of the policies had not been implemented. However, a number of factors, including a long history and noticeable successes with economic integration; and the existence of lock-in effects and widespread stakeholder support for tourism integration, make tourism integration a viable and enduring approach to economic integration. In view of this, the research makes a number of recommendations including wider stakeholder participation in policy formulation and implementation, greater resourcing of strategies and more academic research on the desirability and feasibility of using tourism as a basis for promoting wider and deeper economic integration.