Innovation, Competitiveness, and Sustainability in Tourism Clusters: An Empirical Model of Caribbean Destinations

Sam Cole ()
Additional contact information
Sam Cole: University at Buffalo

A chapter in Regional Science Perspectives on Tourism and Hospitality, 2021, pp 377-401 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter explains and estimates a model of accommodation clusters in tourist destinations. The model variables describe a destination’s intrinsic attraction, synergies between tourism activities, increasing congestion and capacity, and competition-driven technical changes. The model engages technology parameters at four physical scales, global markets for capital and visitors, regional destinations and innovations, destination-level clustering, and characteristic accommodation size. Parameters are estimated across 20 Caribbean destinations from 1986 to 1996. Combined with island-specific tourism policies, the model plausibly backcasts earlier tourism development for Aruba reproduces overshoot in accommodations in the late-1980s, and the following decade of disruptive fluctuations. Although the model over-estimates current hotel accommodation, the excess matches emergent uncontrolled growth of “alternative” accommodation, primarily condominiums, and vacation rentals. This case study illustrates how the cluster model’s components and parameters influence critical junctures in the growth trajectory of destinations.

Keywords: Tourism clusters; Globalization; Innovation; Temporal variability; Sustainable destination development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:adspcp:978-3-030-61274-0_19

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030612740

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-61274-0_19

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Advances in Spatial Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().