Tourism economies and islands’ resilience to the global financial crisis

Abstract

The article is a comparative study of islands’ reactions to the global financial crisis. The main aim is to identify conditions which influence how the effects of the crisis in the tourism sector differed between selected island territories. Seventeen island territories which rely on tourism were selected for analysis. Each reacted differently to the global financial crisis, especially with regard to changes in tourist movement, employment in tourism, and expenditure by foreign tourists. The factors analysed are: length of time as an independent state or dependent territory, degree of dependence on tourism, the diversity of the mix of foreign markets from which tourists arrive, level of dominance of the main foreign market, level of dependence on European and North- and South American markets, duration of flights from the main market, level of economic development, quality of life of the island area’s residents, tourist expenditure, and changes in government expenditure on tourism. The statistical analysis was conducted using both the Spearman and the Kendall rank correlation coefficients.

Keywords

• global financial crisis
• island economics
• island territories
• resilience
• sids
• tourism economy