Tourism on islands: towards island resilience

Tourism on islands: towards island resilience

Blog Article

Island tourism researchers utilise a geographic feature of being an island, a piece of land surrounded by water, as the basis for study. With several islands being categorised as Small Island Developing States , and facing ongoing challenges relating to global financial, natural disasters and recently a pandemic crisis, some attention has been paid to understanding responses of island economies . By the very nature of being islands, several unique characteristics result in degrees of fragmentation and disintegration, which place those economies at a disadvantage. Some islands are very remote with limited connectivity to benefit from growing economic activity in travel and tourism. Nonetheless, it is this very economic activity that islands are often left to turn to, because of lack of resources to support other economic activities. Island geographies are integrally connected to the economic activity that is tourism, passeio em ilheus, on a perspective of resilience and recovery in island tourism destinations, needs to be made in the tourism literature. The vulnerability of islands has been well documented in journals such as Island Studies Journal and other publications , however, understandings about island destinations, lifecycles, system decline and resilience require further elaboration. Several authors have considered various aspects such as the social and ecological perspectives of island resilience governance and resilience and limiting vulnerability . A burgeoning tourism literature about tourism resilience has contributed to the study, however, for island destinations that are increasingly constrained by limited resources, a path to greater island tourism resilience has to be clarified.



This Special Issue started with a call for papers in 2017 and 53 abstracts were received. A summary of information about the topics of abstracts includes some very important topics about island tourism, although many of these did not evolve into full papers. These included various forms of island tourism such as a nautical destination, cruise, slow transport and mobilities. Marketing related topics were also submitted including branding, destination loyalty, vacation satisfaction, advertising and social media content analysis. Abstracts around concepts relating to island tourism submitted included concept of islandness (Butler, Citation2012), resilience, recreating vulnerability, innovation, over-tourism, modelling, planning, and life cycle. Natural environmental impacts included cyclones and climate change, while the human and social geographical perspectives were an important group of content for the abstracts and included topics such as indigenous communities, immigrants, culture, gastronomy, disease, the sharing economy, resident stress and housing. Unfortunately, no abstracts related to cold-water islands, a sub-set of islands which include a number of significant tourism destinations and which, while not facing the hazards of hurricanes or typhoons, are perhaps more vulnerable to regular unattractive weather (in a tourism context) and share many of the same problems of small scale, resource scarcity, and difficult access that their warm-water counterparts suffer from.

A body of work containing 12 papers emerged with research insights about island tourism destinations across the globe. A summary of the articles follows. Island tourism authenticity is challenged by globalisation on culture. Several Caribbean tourism destinations and the challenges of resilience have been included in this Special Issue. Tolkach and Pratt’s article about ‘Globalisation and cultural change in Pacific Island countries: the role of tourism’, explores resiliency to cultural change within the context of Fiji, Tonga and Cook Islands. Kelman’s article about ‘Critiques of island sustainability in tourism’ is thought provoking with the balance between tourism and sustainability being challenged. The SIDS context is explored by Walker and Lee in the ‘Contributions to sustainable tourism in small islands: and analysis of the Cittáslow movement’ and the benefits derived from Slow Food and Slow Tourism’. Bangwayo-Skeete and Skeete’s modelling of tourism resilience in two small island states, Grenada and Barbados, using the Adaptive Cycle Model pushes the boundary of understanding island resilience in tourism dependent islands. Weis, Chambers and Holladay presents the social-ecological aspects of resilience and explores community-based tourism in six coastal communities in Dominica.

European islands as tourism destinations have a particular historical context and Cirer-Costa presents the ‘Economic and social resilience accounts for the recovery of Ibiza’s tourism sector’, showing the historical development of the destination and the contribution of tourism. Amoamo’s paper utilises the geopolitical context of Brexit to understand island resilience in Britain’s Overseas Island Territories, which is exemplified in the case of Pitcairn Island. An understanding of the role of immigrant island communities and the contribution to island resilience has been presented by Calero-Lemes and Garcia-Almeida in relation to immigrant entrepreneur knowledge in the tourism industry utilising a case example of the Eastern Canary Islands’.

This Special Issue includes developing resilient Asian island tourism destinations. Weaver, Tang, Lawton and Liu consider the resilience of the Maldives in relation to cultivating the Chinese market through destination loyalty. King-Chan, Capistrano and Lopez focus of the environment in Camiguin Province, Philippines and draw attention to the increasing need for environmentally responsible behaviour (ERB) to avert potential environmental impact as tourist numbers increase. Young, Reindrawati, Lyons and Johnson’s article particularly focuses on the resident perceptions of tourism from an Islamic Indonesian island and associations of host meaning of tourism that may influence tourism outcomes. Pickel-Chevalier, Bendesa and Putra explore a policy of integrated touristic villages as an archetype of sustainable development in Brazil.