Abstract

The purpose of this Special Issue is to frame island tourism research while bringing to the forefront the myriad of challenges facing islands to develop successful tourism destinations. Islands are special geographic features spread all across the globe, and tourism has been an important economic activity for many of these often resource constrained territories. If tourism is a means to economic prosperity, then island destinations need to explore several considerations and build resilient tourism economies that can overcome external shocks. While tourism researchers have noted island tourism research in book and article titles, when addressing the occurrence of tourism in islands, the body of work surrounding tourism in islands requires framing, as a wide array of concepts has been explored including sustainability, resilience, development, economies, impact, destinations, trends, planning and prospects. With such variety, island tourism research has seemed to lack direction or form. Herein, this Special Issue seeks to address this by framing island tourism research around the themes of Lifecycles, System Decline and Resilience. Tourism growth and development occur as a process over a period of time and this flow can be illustrated using tourism arrivals. Ongoing flows of visitors are expected to take a particular course and understanding changes in that course relates to identification of system decline. Finally, building resilience means gaining the capacity to adapt to and successfully manage changes in the dimensions and nature of tourism.

摘要

本期特刊旨在组织岛屿旅游研究，同时将岛屿发展成功的旅游目的地所面临的众多挑战置于最前沿。岛屿是遍布全球的特殊地理特征，对于许多这些经常资源匮乏的地区，旅游业已成为一项重要的经济活动。如果旅游业是实现经济繁荣的手段，那么岛屿目的地需要探索多种考虑因素，并建立能克服外部冲击的弹性旅游经济体。虽然旅游研究人员在书名和文章标题中都提到了海岛旅游研究，但在解决海岛旅游的问题时，围绕海岛旅游的工作体系却需要框架化，因为人们已经探索了包括可持续性，适应力，发展，经济，影响，目的地，趋势，计划和前景。由于种类繁多，岛屿旅游研究似乎缺乏方向或形式。在此，本期特刊旨在通过围绕岛屿主题的旅游研究框架来解决这一问题。生命周期，系统衰退和弹性。旅游业的增长和发展是一段时间内的一个过程，可以用旅游人数来说明这种流动。预期持续的访问者流量会采用特定的课程，并且了解该课程中的更改与系统衰退的识别有关。最后，建立复原力意味着获得适应和成功管理旅游业规模和性质变化的能力。