Using Local Cuisines when Promoting Small Caribbean Island Destinations

This study compares how four Caribbean small islands—Aruba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Martinique—use their authentic cuisines to promote their destinations. Brochures, catalogs, websites, and other promotional materials for each destination were content analyzed. Although all four destinations seem to use their authentic cuisines for tourism promotion, key differences exist among these islands in their marketing and promotional strategies. Martinique appears to use its local cuisine most aggressively, using a combination of locally prepared foods, cocktails, rum, fruits, and vegetables to visually portray this aspect of the country's heritage. Jamaica, in contrast, uses mainly fruit and vegetable imagery. The study findings suggest a need for these four Caribbean island destinations to develop expertise in culinary tourism, followed by promotion through brochures, catalogs, websites, and other marketing materials.     

The resilience of formal and informal tourism enterprises to disasters: reef tourism in Phuket,Thailand

This paper explores the resilience of vulnerable tourism sectors to disasters in a period of global change and interdependence. The coral reef tourism industry is highly vulnerable to natural disasters and economic and political shocks. The paper also explains why enterprise resilience is central to sustainable tourism management, for economic, socio-cultural and environmental reasons. It extends the concepts of ecological and social resilience to that of enterprise resilience. Using scenarios and interviews with key enterprise staff, the study contrasts the levels of resilience of formal and informal reef tourism enterprises, and the factors associated with the enterprise resilience in Phuket, Thailand, following the 2004 tsunami and the 2008 political crisis. Informal enterprises reported better financial condition in a crisis scenario and higher levels of social capital in the form of government, family and community support than formal enterprises. Formal and informal enterprises both enjoy high lifestyle benefits from reef tourism, which supports resilience. Most formal enterprises had part foreign ownership/management (61%); no informal enterprise had any foreign ownership or management. Management policies supporting reef tourism should consider local nuances and the importance of lifestyle benefits for both formal and informal enterprises, and take steps to enable enterprise flexibility and cost-cutting during crises.     

A green economy indicator framework for tourism destinations

This paper presents a green economy indicator framework for tourism destinations which has been developed in the case study destination of Bali, Indonesia. Whilst the term “green economy” can have many interpretations, here it refers to the global strategy framework surrounding Rio+20, as well as the policies and strategies being developed by tourism destinations as a response. Many uncertainties remain about the effectiveness of these efforts and how they may be measured. For lesser developed countries in particular, reliable data is often difficult to obtain and this study uses a case study approach to identify the relevant, and measurable, indicators in this context. First, a nominal group technique was applied to identify the green economy issues for local tourism stakeholders. The indicators were then selected based on the green economy literature and a review of the available secondary data for the destination. Data on greenhouse gas emissions from tourism was identified as one of the critical gaps and an estimate is provided to show how this could be obtained and monitored. While this indicator framework was developed specifically for Bali, the case study may be relevant for many other island destinations in the lesser developed world that are experiencing rapid tourism growth.     

Modelling international tourism and country risk spillovers for Cyprus and Malta

Small Island Tourism Economies (SITEs) are developing sovereign countries that rely on tourism as a source of exports, and need a consistent inflow of foreign investment in order to facilitate economic growth. Access to international capital markets helps SITEs smooth out their consumption over time, while absorbing adverse domestic production shocks. This paper provides a comparison of tourism growth, country risk returns and their associated volatilities (or uncertainty) for 2 SITEs, namely Cyprus and Malta. Monthly data are available for both international tourist arrivals and composite country risk ratings compiled by the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) for the period May 1986 to May 2002. The time-varying conditional variances of tourism growth and country risk returns for the 2 SITEs are analysed using multivariate models of conditional volatility. Empirical results show that Cyprus and Malta are complementary destinations for international tourists. Changes to tourism patterns in Cyprus lead to changes to tourism patterns in Malta. Hence, tour operators and national tourism promotion authorities in Cyprus and Malta should collaborate closely in marketing and promoting joint tourism products. Moreover, foreign entities interested in investing in the tourism sectors of Cyprus and Malta should consider investment projects that span a long period of time. The performance of the tourism sector and the associated composite risk are independent of each other for the two countries. However, there is a direct relationship between the tourism sectors of Cyprus and Malta and their respective country risk settings.