ABSTRACT
In multi-island states, outlying islands are usually disadvantaged in terms of tourism, since they are beyond the standard tourist gaze (especially where the majority of tourists are from overseas), have limited infrastructure, and no effective means of marketing themselves. Additionally, they may have no particular attractions that differentiate them from larger, more central islands. Moreover the islands in many archipelagos within island states, such as Fiji, Tuvalu and Kiribati, are similar in culture and geography. How then do such islands enter the tourism economy – should they choose to do so – and what might they gain from it? Should they compete – indeed can and do they compete – to draw tourists to particular islands, or collaborate for the benefit of the archipelago as a whole? Will some islands benefit at the expense of others? This chapter seeks to examine these themes in the context of two archipelagos in Fiji where tourism has become of gradually increasing significance since the 1960s.
