Modelling tourism resilience in small island states: a tale of two countries

Abstract

The rising incidence and consequences of natural disasters, global economic crises, climate change, and socio-political upheavals have raised interest in resilience, particularly in small island economies. Their small size and high tourism-dependency make these small island states more vulnerable to such disruptions. Hence, understanding resilience or adaptive capacity to withstand shocks is fundamental to their sustainable development. The emerging literature uses the Adaptive Cycle Model to qualitatively analyse resilience through the evolution of tourism destinations. Nevertheless, the absence of quantitative studies using the Adaptive Cycle Model makes it a daunting task to adequately advise policymakers about the scope and scale of intervention necessary to facilitate the rebuilding of a stronger tourism industry. We, therefore, pioneer the use of Markov Switching Autoregressive Model to test the model’s applicability using four decades of data on tourist arrivals in two Caribbean destinations, Barbados and Grenada. The results reveal untapped opportunities for transformation and regeneration in both countries’ tourism industries, but highlight sharp contrast in their resilience capability. Grenada exhibits greater resilience as its adverse shocks, though deeper, are relatively transitory, while Barbados despite experiencing fewer external shocks faces prolonged repercussions from global recessions. For small islands, we conclude that the factors impacting lower resilience are the industry’s management deficiencies, inadequate cohesion among stakeholders, and lack of innovation. Overall, the findings present a modelling framework for tourism-dependent economies to determine how quickly they recover from major stress events, the associated strategies necessary to strengthen tourism resilience, and the potential to innovate in the tourism industry.

摘要

自然灾害、全球经济危机、气候变化和社会政治动荡的发生频率不断增加, 后果更为严重, 提高了人们对恢复力的兴趣, 特别是小岛屿经济恢复力。这些小岛屿国家面积小, 对旅游业的依存程度高, 使它们更容易受到这种破坏。因此, 了解应对冲击的恢复力或适应能力对它们的可持续发展至关重要。新近文献采用适应性循环模型, 采用旅游目的地的演变的途径定性地分析了目的地的恢复力。然而, 由于缺乏使用适应性循环模型的定量研究, 因此向决策者提供促进重建更强大的旅游业所需的干预尺度和范围的充分建议是一项艰巨的任务。因此, 我们率先使用马尔科夫转换自回归模型来测试该模型的适用性, 该模型使用了四十年来两个加勒比海旅游目的地巴巴多斯和格林纳达的游客人数数据。调查结果揭示了两国旅游业尚未开发的转型和复兴机会, 但也突显了两国在恢复力方面的鲜明对比。格林纳达表现出了更强的恢复力, 因为其负面冲击虽然更深, 但相对短暂, 而巴巴多斯尽管经历的外部冲击较少, 但仍面临全球衰退的长期影响。对于小岛屿国家, 我们得出的结论是, 影响恢复力低的因素是行业管理的缺陷, 利益相关者之间的凝聚力不足, 以及缺乏创新。总体而言, 研究结果为依赖旅游业的经济体提供了一个模型框架, 以确定它们从重大压力事件中恢复的速度, 增强旅游业恢复力所需的相关战略, 以及旅游业创新的潜力。

Keywords:

• resilience
• Adaptive Cycle Model
• tourism
• Markov Switching Model
• small island states
• Caribbean
• Barbados
• Grenada

关键词:

• 恢复力
• 适应性循环模型
• 旅游业
• 马尔科夫转换模型
• 小型岛屿国家
• 加勒比海
• 巴巴多斯
• 格林纳达

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Acknowledgement

The authors express gratitude to Dr. Wendy Grenade for the insights provided on Grenada’s historical developments and the literature she provided.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.