IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecr/col033/69187.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Building post-pandemic economic resilience by diversifying tourism: the case of Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia

Author

Listed:
  • Harris, Rochelle
  • McLean, Sheldon

Abstract

Through a combination of primary and secondary research, this study sheds light on the effects of the pandemic on the tourism industries of the small island states of Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, and Saint Kitts and Nevis. Additionally, the study seeks to identify potential areas for niche market development to diversify the tourism sector in these destinations. Using a counterfactual analysis, visitor expenditure losses were estimated at over $7 billion over the period 2020 to 2022, among the three countries under review. The easing of restrictions on movement in 2021 and 2022 however allowed for a steady return of tourism, with the United States market performing particularly well. To this end, using criteria adopted from Dwyer and Kim’s (2003) integrative model for destination competitiveness and insight from stakeholder consultations, the study identified optimum areas for niche market development. These included integrative products such as cultural heritage tourism, wellness tourism, gastronomic and eco-tourism, and parallel products including sports tourism and education tourism. These areas present opportunities to enrich the visitor experience, diversify the tourism product, create value-added linkages with other sectors and build resilience in the tourism industry. In addition to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the study identified other factors impacting stakeholders in the tourism industry, many of which are longstanding issues. These include a mismatch between available skills and skills needed to fill current and future roles in the tourism industry; the scarcity of data for strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation; and sustainability. Demographic groups including women in the tourism industry also face peculiar challenges. To address these challenges, the study recommends strengthening strategic planning, improving data collection and analysis, investing in human resources, strengthening stakeholder participation in tourism planning, and improving the business environment among other recommendations.

Suggested Citation

  • Harris, Rochelle & McLean, Sheldon, 2024. "Building post-pandemic economic resilience by diversifying tourism: the case of Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia," Studies and Perspectives – ECLAC Subregional Headquarters for The Caribbean 69187, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
  • Handle: RePEc:ecr:col033:69187
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repositorio.cepal.org/handle/11362/69187
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecr:col033:69187. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Biblioteca CEPAL (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eclaccl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.