Abstract
Tourism is often seen as the ‘golden ticket’ for the development of many islands. The current COVID-19 pandemic, however, has ground global tourism to a halt. In particular, islands that depend heavily on tourist inflows—including mass-tourism islands, and small island developing states (SIDS)—have seen their revenues diminish significantly, and poverty rates increasing. Some alternative-tourism islands have fared better, as they have focused on providing personalized, nature-based experiences to mostly domestic tourists. This article focuses on the experiences of mass-tourism islands, SIDS, and alternative-tourism islands during the COVID-19 pandemic, and offers possible post-pandemic scenarios, as well as recommendations for sustainable island tourism development. Although the pandemic has largely had a negative impact on the tourism sector, this is a unique opportunity for many islands to review the paradigm of tourism development. In this newly emerging world, and under a still very uncertain future scenario, the quadriptych of sustainability is more important than ever. Responsible governance and management of islands’ natural resources and their tourism activities, addressing climate change impacts, the diversification of islands’ economies, and the promotion of innovative and personalized tourist experiences are all necessary steps towards increasing islands’ resilience in case of future economic downturn or health- and environment-related crises.
Highlights
Tourism is a massive global business; by the end of the last century, international tourism was generating well over USD 450 billion, and less than two decades later, in2019, world international tourism was generating tourist receipts of USD 1.5 trillion [1].This explains why in 2000, most nations had already jumped on the tourism ‘bandwagon’; for a large number of countries, their tourism sectors were already significant contributors to their gross domestic product (GDP) and had been integrated as a key factor of their forward-looking development strategies [2,3].as early as the 1990s, it was recognized and documented that tourism, as a driver of economic growth, always generates complex social trade-offs [4]
As early as the 1990s, it was recognized and documented that tourism, as a driver of economic growth, always generates complex social trade-offs [4]. These trade-offs are inevitable and ubiquitous, and confront, on the one hand, the social benefits produced by the tourism sector—mainly in the form of the welcomed economic activity and employment it generates—with, on the other hand, the social costs imposed by tourism activities, notoriously evident in the form of environmental, natural capital, and cultural degradation [5,6,7,8,9]
To understand the potential direction and magnitude of the impact of COVID-19 positive and negative economic shocks that drive economic fluctuations of common ocon the global tourism sector, it is necessary to realize that, on the one hand, unlike the currence, pandemics are adverse events, and so their effects on health and economic outusual positive and negative economic shocks that drive economic fluctuations of common comes tend to be all on the negative side [23]
Summary
Tourism is a massive global business; by the end of the last century, international tourism was generating well over USD 450 billion, and less than two decades later, in. While tourism can be the answer to many development issues that islands face, it can have serious sustainability impacts: economic (increase in prices, infrastructure costs, opportunity costs), socio-cultural (loss of authenticity, cultural exploitation, social tension), and environmental impacts (land degradation, air pollution and noise, waste and sewage problems, water pollution, biodiversity loss) [13,14,15,16] This is the case with mass-tourism islands, that is islands that are characterized by a large volume of tourists compared to the concerned territory and to the local population density, resulting eventually in saturation of the area, degradation, and loss of attractiveness [17]. It provides possible postpandemic scenarios and suggestions for the future of tourism development in island destinations, taking into account current and future sustainability challenges, as well as the changing map of international tourism, as result of the pandemic
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