Introduction to special issue on island tourism resilience

Abstract

The purpose of this Special Issue is to frame island tourism research while bringing to the forefront the myriad of challenges facing islands to develop successful tourism destinations. Islands are special geographic features spread all across the globe, and tourism has been an important economic activity for many of these often resource constrained territories. If tourism is a means to economic prosperity, then island destinations need to explore several considerations and build resilient tourism economies that can overcome external shocks. While tourism researchers have noted island tourism research in book and article titles, when addressing the occurrence of tourism in islands, the body of work surrounding tourism in islands requires framing, as a wide array of concepts has been explored including sustainability, resilience, development, economies, impact, destinations, trends, planning and prospects. With such variety, island tourism research has seemed to lack direction or form. Herein, this Special Issue seeks to address this by framing island tourism research around the themes of Lifecycles, System Decline and Resilience. Tourism growth and development occur as a process over a period of time and this flow can be illustrated using tourism arrivals. Ongoing flows of visitors are expected to take a particular course and understanding changes in that course relates to identification of system decline. Finally, building resilience means gaining the capacity to adapt to and successfully manage changes in the dimensions and nature of tourism.