Small Island and Small Destination Tourism

Overcoming the Smallness Barrier for Economic Growth and Tourism Competitiveness

Robertico Croes

• Publisher: Apple Academic Press
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000565515
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

This unique and thoughtful book considers the tourism specialization, economic growth, and tourism competitiveness of a very specific type of tourism: small islands practicing warm water island tourism.

This new book thoroughly examines the phenomenon of why some small island destinations have been more successful than others. The main premise applied is that success and survival of small island tourism hinges on resolving the mystery regarding the relationship between competitiveness and quality of life. In addressing this question, the book reviews four relevant and interconnected concepts: tourism, competitiveness, quality of life, and scale (or size). In doing so, the book enhances understanding of the potential of tourism for the improvement of the quality of life of the residents of small islands.

In the last chapter of the book, the author assesses the impact of COVID-19 on tourism and specifically its ramifications for small island destinations. Whether small island populations can rise from beneath the COVID -19 burden that threatens their economic future is yet to be seen.

Small Island and Small Destination Tourism: Overcoming the Smallness Barrier for Economic Growth and Tourism Competitiveness is written from a sustainable perspective that combines tourism dynamics, development, competitiveness, quality of life, and business. As such, it is aimed at a broad but higher-level audience including graduate students, academicians and researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and international organizations.

CHAPTER 1 RETHINKING SMALLNESS AND OPENNESS

The interest in defining an optimal country size to overcome “the penalties of smallness” intermittently piqued the attention of philosophers and scientists alike even as far back as Ancient Greece. For example, during the American Revolution, the founding fathers struggled to justify the large size of the country as a benefit to economic prosperity. Thus, the years of perplexity and pondering have made clear that the geographical size of a country and its relationship to prosperity bears an importance. Yet, the literature on the economic and social implications of the size of countries is scarce. The editorial of The Round Table (The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs) succinctly reveals the development literature’s paucity regarding the effects of country size, stating “Academia has paid little attention to small states” (2012, p. 202). This lack of attention continues despite the proliferation of small states and countries into the global environment.

The proliferation of small countries in the global arena is due to the significant decrease in the economic costs of independence occurring since World War II. The ever hospitable open global, trading order enabled small countries to prosper within a more secure global system. These two trends, i.e., the paucity in examining the implications of small size and their global proliferation, have pitted centrifugal against centripetal economic and social forces about their viability and role in the new global system. It is likely critical, then, to examine the impact of smallness (size) on the economic and social potential of countries-particularly since their welfare may well depend on the small-scale problems that could impede their sustained progress toward that potential.

1.1 THE CHANGING MEANING OF SMALLNESS

The literature examining small countries describes them as tethered to catastrophe. Typically, smallness references material resources, constraints, and distinct characteristics measured in a geographic space. The geographic space involves states in the sense of international politics and relations, territories, or the subnational island jurisdictions (SNIJ), including Aruba, Cayman Islands, and Bermuda. The latter concept is borrowed from Godfrey Baldacchino.¹ The literature assessing these small countries identified them as non-viable, vulnerable, weak, and insignificant entities in the global environment. This non-flattering, albeit defeatist, characterization seems to emanate from the conceptualization of smallness through a resource-based lens. Moreover, possessing resources determines the opportunities or limitations available for a country to prosper and to realize its inclinations in the global setting. That is, the presence or absence of water, beaches, deserts, mountains, oil, and gas can have an influence on how people behave and interact with each other, and ultimately how they organize and coordinate on an intra and inter-organizational basis to achieve collective goals. That available resources have shaped and molded the evolution of societies and civilization is evident.

¹ Baldacchino addressed the smallness problematique in multiple writings. See some of his writings in the reference list.

One can then understand why debates about the meaning and relevance of smallness goes back more than two millennia ago. From early civilizations until the French Revolution, commentators saw smallness as a beneficial attribute for survival and prosperity for a collectivity. For example, Plato and Aristotle touted the societal benefits that could be derived. Plato estimated that the optimal population size of the polity to thrive should be a maximum of 5,040 heads of families. Aristotle considered the optimal size to be when everybody knows everybody. The desirability of a small polity to prompt prosperity and inclusiveness also resonated with Montesquieu and Rousseau. They embraced an optimal population as a small Greek polity. For example, Montesquieu asserts,

It is in the nature of a republic that it should have a small territory; without that, it could scarcely exist. In a large republic, there are large fortunes, and consequently little moderation of spirit... In a large republic, the common good is sacrificed to 1,000 considerations; it is subordinated to various exceptions; it depends on accidents. In a small republic, the public good is more strongly felt, better known, and closer to each citizen... (From The Spirit of Laws, C.L. Montesquieu, 1750, Book VIII).

The enlightenment thinkers view smallness as the anchor for freedom, attachment to the public interest, and the foundation for a sustainable republic. However, the advocacy for smallness as a virtue changed fortune with the American Revolution. The founding fathers strenuously debated whether smallness was tenable for the American Republic. They came to the opposite conclusion that they should advocate for largeness. For example, Hamilton questioned Montesquieu’s view about the relevance of smallness in defining the republic.

If we, therefore, take his [Montesquieu] ideas on this point as the criterion of truth, we shall be driven to the alternative either of taking refuge at once in the arms of monarchy, or of splitting ourselves into an infinity of little, jealous, clashing, tumultuous commonwealths, the wretched nurseries of unceasing discord and the miserable objects of universal pity and contempt (Hamilton, The Federalist No. 9).

This view reveals the fear that smallness would create instability and weakness. Mills, who also viewed smallness as a temptation to war and foreign aggressiveness, later adopted this view. Not only was smallness considered as a perversion of the democratic and peaceful ideal, but smallness also engendered a sense of limitations, constraints, and vulnerability. This negative connotation persisted during the establishment of the League of Nations when smallness impeded Liechtenstein from attaining membership in that organization.

The notion of equating smallness with vulnerability emerged prominently after the Second World War. Already, in September 1957, the Inter-national Economic Association organized a conference in The Hague to examine the economic implications of the small size of nations in the global setting. The conference The Economic Consequences of the Size of Nations, in particular, assessed whether small size can inhibit the viability of these nations in the global setting. The conference published its proceedings in 1960. Robinson, in the introduction of that publication, stated that the study of the economic implications of small nations is a “subject that well deserves more attention.”² This quote suggests that the attention to this subject lacked currency at the end of the 1950s. Indeed, the conference’s attentions centered on the advantages of scale embedded in large countries and whether small nation’s international trade could overcome “the penalties of smallness.”

² See Robinson (1960).

However, this important issue did not enjoy the hoped-for attention of the 1957 conference nor of the years between. The topic was addressed only sporadically and intermittently with its concomitant vulnerability characterization. For example, William Demas expressed in connection with the Caribbean islands: “Small may be beautiful, but it may also be fragile, vulnerable, and extremely externally dependent.”³ The focus on smallness and its concomitant economic consequences reemerged during the 1980s for several reasons, including the heightened attention paid by the World Bank and other international organizations, the creation of the Commonwealth Vulnerability Index, the persistent calls of special status and deferential treatment of small countries within the World Trade Organization, and the formation of a Consultative Group of Small Economies within the negotiations’ framework of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

³ See William Demas (1992).

Some sporadic attempts appeared among the United Nations units, such as the initiative in 1972 of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). UNCTAD prompted a program, the so-called small island developing states (SIDS). This program distinguishes the relevance of smallness as an essential criterion to define countries. Vulnerability became the key criterion to define smallness. The work of the Commonwealth Secretariat in the 1980s followed this line of thinking again, expressing vulnerability in defining smallness. Vulnerability is the lack of resources of a country to provide for itself-depicting helplessness, particularly in economic terms. The premise of these initiatives or actions is that small economies are a distinct group of countries, that these countries are vulnerable and, therefore, require special attention and actions.⁴

⁴ See, for example, https://www.unwto.org/sustainable-development/small-islands-developing-states;https://www.unccd.int/publications/land-degradation-neutrality-small-island-developing-statestech-nical-report; and https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/report/emerging-issues-small-island-de-veloping-states.

Two salient aspects remain constant about the characterization of smallness during the postwar period, i.e., paucity of a consistent conceptualization or measurement of smallness, and smallness as synonymous with vulnerability. The vulnerability argument mainly considers the disadvantageous bearing imposed by small size on these countries due to external shocks. These external shocks...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Endorsements
• Preface
• 1. Rethinking Smallness and Openness
• 2. The Tourism Specialization Hypothesis
• 3. The Tourism Development Model
• 4. Tourism Angst and Demand Push
• 5. Tourism Specialization and Economic Growth
• 6. Constitutional Economics: Blasé?
• 7. Maintaining the Growth Momentum
• 8. Upending Scale
• Bibliography
• Annex 1
• Annex 2
• Index