The impact of international tourism on the EU small states

Abstract

The objective of this brief paper is to assess the socio-spatial and economic impact of international tourist arrivals on the European Union Small States (EUSS) so as to comment on the nexus of the two indicators.

The method used to measure the indicators presented in this paper are based on the Tourist Penetration Index (TPI) proposed and elaborated by McElroy & de Albuquerque (1998). The TPI has three components, relating to economic, sociocultural and environmental penetration. In practice the economic impact was measured as tourist expenditures per resident, the sociocultural impact was measured in terms of visitor density per 1000 residents and the environmental impact was measured as hotel rooms per sq. km.

We shall use a similar method utilised for constructing the TPI, but confine our analysis to two components relating respectively to the social-spatial impacts and the economic impacts in order to measure what we call the Tourism Impact Indicator (TII).