Research on the determinant of international tourism has so far neglected tourism promotion
efforts as a potential factor in the tourism demand equation. Moreover the few studies focused
exclusively on developed country cases and till now no studies have been undertaken for small
island states for which tourism accounts significantly to their economies. Research works have
also failed to adequately investigate the time series properties of the data. The paper thus attempts to fill in the above gaps in and add new insights to the literature by focusing on the contribution of tourism promotion efforts on tourist arrival for the case of the small island state of Mauritius using an ARDL approach. Analysis of the results reveals that tourism marketing and promotion is indeed a significant element, though as not as sizeable as other classical ones, in the tourism equation
