Dropsy V., Montet, C. Poirine, B. (2018), « Tourism, Insularity and Remoteness : A Gravity-Based Approach », working paper, University of French Polynesia, Punaauia, Tahiti, French Polynesia.
Acknowledgements: The authors thank the participants of the 2018 QATEM workshop in Tahiti and the 2018 WEAI conference in Vancouver for their valuable comments, as well as the CETOP (Centre d'Études du Tourisme en Océanie-Pacifique) for financial assistance.
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the sensitivity of bilateral tourism flows to distance, relative prices, cultural and political proximity variables, for all tourism destinations in the world, but also for a subset of small island destinations, using a gravity model. We find that doubling the distance between origin and destination countries reduces the tourist flows by more than two third, and that doubling the economic masses of the origin or destination country increases the number of tourist arrivals by more than two third. Small remote islands are clearly at a disadvantage with regards to these factors of gravity. On the other hand, sharing a common language and a common colonial past with another country raises the likelihood of visiting it by more than ten-fold. Small islands often benefit from these positive influences on tourism, which can more than offset the negative gravity effects.
Keywords: Tourism, Small islands, Gravity Model
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