Tourism Dynamics and Sustainability for Mediterranean Islands

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This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/su14074183

Tourism may not sustainably support territories with limited natural resource stock such as islands. The volume of visitor arrivals and the industry investments can increase the pressure even beyond sustainable levels. There is an evident and unresolved tension between these two great polarities, sustainability and economic growth driven by tourism.

tourism islands impact economic development sustainability

1. Insularity Condition and Tourism

Isolation determines the islands’ social, cultural, political, and economic life. Historically, being isolated from the outside world, the islands appeared to be considered autarkic societies, without social and economic dynamism and with few commercial relations. Hence this nineteenth-century idea of the islands as ultraconservative, immovable, and atavistic societies reluctant to change, whose distrustful island population hardly interacts with outsiders. This is a typical romantic idea, but its influence still continues today ^[1].

Separation and unavoidable “territorial discontinuity” affect the life of the islands by questioning their external accessibility, both for those who intend to leave and those who intend to enter the island, since the external mobilization of people can only be carried out through the air and maritime transport units. Likewise, uncertainty is generated in essential aspects of island life, such as providing necessities.

Insularity ^[2]^[3] requires a port infrastructure adequate to current needs and improved to meet demand expansions. Ports are needed for the reception of vessels and must be equipped with means for loading, disembarking, and storing goods, with devices for customs control. Passengers’ entry and exit must also be foreseen. Likewise, airports and other connected infrastructures are essential for the accessibility to islands and, from the tourist perspective, currently even more important. Itineraries established in island transport may be affected by adverse weather and maritime conditions for navigation or by specific over-demands and thus generate discomfort in the mobilization of ordinary users and consumers. Moreover, critical marine phenomena destroy port facilities, coastal roads, and homes.

Therefore, insularity can be considered according to two complementary dimensions. The former is related to the physical vulnerability of the islands in spatial terms (isolation, small size or smallness, scarcity of resources) in relation to specific characteristics associated with the physical and geographical features of these contexts. This dimension is persistent in economic–commercial or economic development analysis on the islands. While the latter dimension, the “islandness” ^[3]^[4] presents a rather metaphysical cut, it reflects feelings common to all islanders based on the isolation inherent to the insular nature of islands, usually in line with solid senses of roots and community.

According to the former dimension, territorial discontinuity increases the costs of external supply products and export goods caused by the mobilization and storage of shipments and landings. In this respect, the researchers talk about the costs of insularity, spawning over time a whole literature on the nature of such costs ^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8], on the way to measure, calculate, and evaluate them ^[9]^[10], and more recently, how to compensate the excess costs caused by remoteness, insularity, and ultra-peripherality of the island territories ^[11]^[12].

All these factors related to insularity and the verification of their simultaneous presence in these territories have led to the emergence of insular vulnerability ^[13]^[14]^[15]. In their economic development process ^[16], the islands start from a situation characterized by a multiplicity of handicaps and physical, financial, and sociocultural weaknesses that cannot be avoided; therefore, a specific policy design is needed. The open debate in the European Union on insularity, its costs, and the way to face them are far from reaching a conclusion.

For island contexts, tourism represents, in this sense, the only policy option to overcome the structural constraints imposed by the small size of their economies and the insular physical conditions.

From an economic point of view, many islands have simply insufficient domestic market demand for a good or service to enable local firms to achieve any efficiencies or economies of scale. However, in the case of tourism, the demand is imported (incoming tourism), and thus, the market size can change and increase due to the possibility to attract external visitors. In this way, a local firm operating on an island could have a larger market than the local context for its goods and services. Then, they may begin to achieve economies of scale and efficiencies thanks to the tourist flows ^[17] (453–465). Therefore, island firms can face the problem of the small size of the local market thanks to the demand deriving from the incoming tourists. Moreover, tourists are high spending people, so the incomes for local enterprises will increase more than proportionally. Given that, insular economies are almost totally based on tourism and related activities.

Another condition that affects islands is the geographical distance, which limits the accessibility to a destination with consequences for tourism flows, which are consequently affected by the higher cost of transport and the difficulty to reach them. Then, also for tourism, the need to consider the costs of insularity in the economic development dynamics arises.

Island destinations represent a unique cluster, where tourism development and sustainability issues are connected and represent crucial aspects of the local economy and well-being ^[18].

2. Policy Implication for Mediterranean Islands

Fifteen insular contexts belonging to six different countries, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, France, and Spain, were compared to highlight general findings and specific features.

Insular contexts are different in geo-demographic and institutional dimensions and in terms of tourism development.

The various combinations of territorial extension, population, and tourism industry characteristics lead to different socio-environmental impacts and levels of efficiency in managing the tourism industry in two different periods of time.

The distribution of the tourist supply is not uniform across all the islands. The Spanish Archipelago is the first in terms of beds, counting more beds than Sardinia and Sicily, although characterized by a territorial extension equal to one-fifth of Sicily, which is the largest Mediterranean island. Here the researchers find the highest portion of tourist accommodation structures (30.6%), followed by Sardinia with 23.4%.

Considering the size of the structures, the highest number of beds is in hotel accommodations (1,355,348, in 2019). With more than 100 beds, the largest hotels are in the Balearic Islands, the Maltese Archipelago, the Dodecanese Islands, Sardinia, Crete, Cyprus, and the Ionian Islands.

The other accommodation facilities are smaller than the previous one, except for Cyprus and Corse, equipped with a small number of large structures with an average size of 494 beds and 308 beds per establishment. This figure is not surprising given that the main kind of other facilities in these contexts is camping. In 2019, both arrivals and overnights increased in the islands of the Mediterranean Basin (+53% and +34%, respectively). Remarkably, 52% of arrivals are due to the Balearic Islands, Sicily, and Crete, and 56% of overnights can be attributed to the Balearic Islands, Crete, and the Dodecanese. The Spanish Archipelago, in itself, represents almost 30% of arrivals to Mediterranean islands and 32% of the total overnight stays corresponding to more than 68 million nights. Considering the variation in the observed period, the best performances have been recorded by the Greek Islands, Malta, and Sardinia, which show an increase greater than 50% in arrivals, and the Greek Islands and Corse with an increase greater than 70% for overnights.

Malta shows the highest TEI and TDI values in sustainability and socio-environmental impact.

By focusing on the deviations recorded by each index during the period 2007–2019, the best and worst cases can be highlighted. Corsica, Cyprus, and the Tuscan Islands show to have reduced the territorial exploitation index and, therefore, tourist pressure on the territory. The islands that experienced the most significant increase in this indicator are the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, the Ionian Islands, and Sardinia. In terms of occupancy rate, the Cyclades recorded the best increase in the observed period (+0.5). The concentration of beds is relatively stable, except that Dodekanisa, showing a higher density (+0.17) and a greater average size (+0.21) in 2019 than in 2007.

Comparing the TEI index with the other three indicators selected, greater attention to sustainable aspects in the small contexts can be observed. Large islands always appear in the quadrant corresponding to the higher socio-environmental pressure.

In general, the Cyclades, the Ionian Islands, and the Northeastern Aegean Islands are always in the win–win quadrant. On the other hand, large and medium insular contexts always show low sustainability positions. Balearic and Malta, among the small and micro contexts, show the same positioning. Sardinia began with a sustainable approach in 2007, moving towards the first quadrant in 2019, getting worse in terms of socio-environmental impact.

3. Islands’ Tourism Policy Implications

Islands are considered fragile territories due to the limited physical and economic resources and an unstable environmental balance. Sustainability aspects are always regarded as central for those territories, and at the same time, the need to support local economies through tourism is considered essential. The paper compared Mediterranean islands’ performances by using statistical indicators considering island clusters. The analysis shows that islands are characterized by a model of tourist development that has encouraged the construction of large hotels with a high average number of beds per establishment, thus creating sizable and prominent tourist destinations.

The need to increase the number of tourism establishments, number of beds, and the need to rise in efficiency measured by beds occupancy resulted in a rise in island pressure between 2007/2019. Analysis results are more evident for large and medium Mediterranean islands and in the case of large archipelagos. Due to this comprehensive tourism policy, the pressure on the islands is increasingly attracting more visitors to islands with an increase in tourists and overnights. Conversely, small and micro islands kept a contained pressure in 2007/2019 by choosing a small establishment dimension.

The analysis could further consider other external factors that influenced the increase of tourist supply: territorial dimensions, ability to attract investment, size of flows, and different time stages of these destinations’ life cycles.

Island dimensions show a natural limitation in tourism investments. Large and medium islands and archipelagos offer a development model based on the tourism industry model, increasing the industry, following the increase in tourism demand before the COVID-19 pandemic. The rise in island pressure was not considered a limitation, and the expansion of the market supported the economic growth in the industry and local economy. Small and micro islands followed a more balanced model, by following the demand increase which adopted policies to keep a moderate level of pressure and islands sustainability.

Mediterranean islands need to address strategic development policy to ensure economic efficiency and at the same time respect the local environment and culture. In this context, new technologies, as well as European strategies, could support the management to take action on specific issues, like urban and environmental planning, mobility, smart cities, waste, and water management, energy consumption, promotion of local culture, and tourist flow management.

Furthermore, advances in ICT help improve destination management and promotion at the same time raise visitors’ awareness towards tourism that respects local people and resources ^[19].

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Subjects: Economics

Contributors MDPI registered users' name will be linked to their SciProfiles pages. To register with us, please refer to https://encyclopedia.pub/register :

Giovanni Ruggieri

Patrizia Calò

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Update Date: 14 Apr 2022

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1. Insularity Condition and Tourism

2. Policy Implication for Mediterranean Islands

3. Islands’ Tourism Policy Implications