ABSTRACT
Tourism is now the world’s largest industry. It has been defined as ‘1. The practice of travelling for pleasure. 2. The business of providing tours and services for tourists’ (American Heritage Dictionary of English). This captures well the business aspect; the idea that money can be extracted from those travelling. Much of the tourist industry that impacts on small islands is that subdivision of tourism that is holidaymaking, and the chapter will focus on this. Holiday travel tends to be an activity of people who, on the world scale, are relatively wealthy. Large sections of the developed world’s populations now consider it almost an inalienable right to take a couple of weeks away every summer; some might add a winter skiing jaunt to their annual cycle of activities. In the developing world, too, people with money might also travel for pleasure; less wealthy citizens of such nations might sometimes travel but this is more likely to be for work or, perhaps, for religious purposes, given their low disposable incomes. As a country’s wealth increases, more of its people will tend to start taking holidays, though not necessarily foreign trips; a large proportion of Americans have always stayed within the USA and relatively few have passports. The Japanese by contrast have become near ubiquitous in overseas holiday areas in recent decades. The summer holidays especially are often taken on islands.
