10 ISLAND(ER) TOURISM PERSPECTIVES – Contributions by Teresa Borges-Tiago
10 ISLAND(ER) TOURISM PERSPECTIVES – Contributions by Teresa Borges-Tiago
Living on an island, conducting research focused on the island context, and sharing your findings with the world make you reflect on tourism behavior and the different dimensions of the unique and rich tourism ecosystem. Questions arise regarding what tourist destinations have to offer and how tourism and hospitality firms act to ensure a meaningful travel experience. Simultaneously, questions also arise regarding the distinctive components of the tourism ecosystem and regarding how tourists value these components offered to them in their traveling experiences. Therefore, for almost ten years, I focused on tourists’ behavioral patterns and the response from tourism and hospitality firms and destination marketing organizations (DMOs). In particular, I focused on tourists’ reviews and comments on which tourism and hospitality firms and DMOs are highly dependent, as well as surveys conducted with different stakeholders, bringing my marketing expertise to the tourism and hospitality field.
Small islands are attractive tourism destinations due to their natural resources, peripheral locations, and unique attractions (Tiago & Borges-Tiago, 2022; Tiago, Faria, Cogumbreiro, Couto, & Tiago, 2016). However, their ecosystems are fragile. They are highly dependent on the exterior and transportation and communication systems (McElroy, 2003; Ridderstaat & Nijkamp, 2016). My homeland – the Azores – is a living lab due to the economic, social, and environmental diversity found in nine small islands, which are attractive to tourism.
In the latest years, Azores has been considered a sustainable tourism destination, being the first archipelago to receive international accreditation by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council. This challenges decision-makers to run a sustainable development path and, at the same time, puts the archipelago under the spotlight and preferences of tourists.
Two main frameworks have always been used in my contributions to the field, supporting my multi-tier approach to the tourism ecosystem: smart tourism and sustainable tourism. The interconnection between these two concepts, smart tourism and sustainable tourism, could be assessed by conducting conceptual and empirical studies related to them (Buhalis, 2020; Gretzel, Sigala, Xiang, & Koo, 2015; Koo, Park, & Lee, 2017, Gossling, Ring, Dwyer, Andersson, & Hall, 2016; Maxim, 2016; Yasarata, Altinay, Burns, & Okumus, 2010), This interconnection is particularly relevant to an island context, especially in the case of small islands, due to the particularities of island ecosystems.
Tourism and technology implications
For decades, tourism and hospitality firms were of prime importance to the communication process related to tourism. The growing symbiosis between technology and tourism has changed how companies and tourists interact (Buhalis, 2020; Xiang, 2018). In this regard, social media has had the most significant impac