Kicking goals or offside: is tourism development in the Pacific helping progress towards the MDGs?

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Tourism and islandscapes: Cultural realignment, social-ecological resilience and change

If, as according to Robin (2015: online), "islands are idealised ecological worlds, the Edens of a fallen planet'", the rationale underpinning tourism expansion should acknowledge MacLeod's (2013) notion of "cultural realignment" that calls for optimal and resilient encounters. This introductory article to the subsequent theme section of the journal on sustainable tourism acts as a bridge toward the development of emergent themes that describe how island peoples adapt and respond in localised cultural islandscapes as a consequence of tourism expansion. The links between cultural alignment and social-ecological resilience are clear and the principal and overarching question posed in this introductory article is: To what extent are islandscapes resilient to rapidly changing utilities, significances and ways of life wrought by tourism expansion? The vulnerabilityresilience duality remains firmly entrenched in the discourse on islands where tourism has become prominent, and although tourism provides some resiliency, overall, islandscapes remain subject to externally driven fast and slow change that exercises an overwhelming influence. Islander agency will likely remain subject to the fluctuations in the demands of the tourism supply chain. Therefore, tourism as a standalone focus of islands is a high-risk proposition, especially in contexts where externally driven change is likely to intensify

Tourism in Pacific island countries: a status quo round-up

In the 21st century, Pacific island countries (PICs) continue to leverage for tourism the attributes that have imbued them, including appeals to their cultural, geographical, and climatic allure. However, the question raised more frequently by many is why despite the many decades of tourism across the region, development impacts from the sector remain largely muted. The key remit of this paper is to offer a status quo round‐up of tourism in PICs and to draw on key emergent themes that underlay the present context. There is little doubt that for policymakers and their international development partners, whether tourism has or can lead to enduring development outcomes remains clouded in questions over whether there is ample evidence available to support such assertions. However, this has failed to dampen the enthusiasm of multilateral agencies that promote the notion that tourism's potential remains largely underdeveloped. With largely narrow economic bases, PICs have little choice but to seek further development of tourism despite the many fundamental constraints that make them less competitive than Southeast Asian destinations