Routledge Handbook on Tourism and Small Island States in the Pacific

This timely handbook critically examines the development and role of tourism in small Pacific Island states located across Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The volume presents an expansive evaluation of current issues, challenges and potentialities for the 13 self-governing states.

Interdisciplinary in coverage and borne of a varied and international authorship, this handbook incorporates 27 specifically commissioned and original contributions. Structured into four thematic sections and embellished with insightful tables and illustrations throughout, the overarching ethos of this volume is to contribute to framing the role of tourism, tourism development and the tourism industry within the context of self-governing Pacific Island states faced with the challenge of pursuing an independent path of development. In doing so, the work highlights and deciphers various tourism development perplexities in the Pacific, examining closely the intersecting sociocultural, geopolitical, environmental, organizational, operational and strategic challenges. This volume, thus, discusses a range of issues: facilitators and inhibitors of tourism growth and development; climate change, ecological concerns, and eco-tourism; non-tourism and undertourism; crisis management and the COVID-19 virus; transportation and tourism infrastructural concerns; tourism policy and planning (including tourism governance); sectoral links between tourism; food and agriculture; gender and micro-entrepreneurship; community management and participation; cultural and natural heritage sites; and the handicraft industry. The work pays critical attention to the various trajectories of sustainable tourism and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Despite the many challenges and concerns raised, the book implicates the importance of good governance, progressive post-COVID-19 recovery strategies and directives, and creative and imaginative options in the successful development, re-development and advancement of tourism.

As a definitive reference resource for this subject area, this handbook will be of great interest to students, researchers and academics within tourism, development studies, geography, Pacific studies, sustainability and environmental studies.

Marcus L. Stephenson is Professor of Tourism and Hospitality Management, and Dean of the School of Hospitality at Service Management at Sunway University (Malaysia). Prior to this appointment in October 2017, he was Professor and Head of the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management at The University of the South Pacific (Fiji). He is the co-author of ’Tourism and Citizenship: Rights, Freedoms and Responsibilities in the Global Order’ (2014, Routledge) and co-editor of ’International Tourism Development and the Gulf Cooperation Council States: Challenges and Opportunities’ (2017, Routledge). He has conducted tourism research in the Caribbean, Middle East, Pacific Island states, and the UK, and has published extensively on the sociology of tourism.