Resumen de Tourism, insularity, and remoteness: A gravity-based approach

Vincent Dropsy, Christian Montet, Bernard Poirine

• This study investigates the sensitivity of bilateral tourism flows to distance, relative prices, andcultural and political proximity variables, with a special focus on small island destinations, using agravity model. We find that these flows are negatively affected by larger distances between originand destination countries and by lower gross domestic product (GDP) in both countries. Thereare significant differences between our subset of islands and other nations. On the one hand, smallislands have higher elasticities of demand with regard to distance and destination GDP and are at adisadvantage compared to other destinations since they are small and remote. Furthermore, theyhave a much higher price elasticity of demand. On the other hand, sharing a common language anda common colonial past with the origin country has a greater positive impact on tourism flows tosmall islands than to other countries.