ABSTRACT
In numerous island microstates, particularly those situated in middle latitudes, tourism has become synonymous with economic growth. For the last four decades, policy-makers in these small countries have emphasized the development of tourism as a means of attracting the foreign exchange necessary for inducing economic diversification and rapid modernization. Indeed, the considerable obstacles associated with these microstates' insularity and relative isolation - namely the lack of natural, human, and institutional resources, declining agricultural sectors, and their extremely small internal markets - have oftentimes made the adoption of tourism an ‘inevitable’ development option (Wilkinson 1989).
