ABSTRACT
Tourism tends to bring along some distinct challenges to island locales. These impacts will loom larger with a decreasing size of the island territory and/or the size of its resident population. First, there is a real risk of a very rapid saturation of an island as a tourism destination. Second, many small island economies can become totally enamoured of and gripped by the tourism industry, to the exclusion or detriment of any other serious alternative productive activity. Third, and unless connected by 'fixed links', tourism visitation to islands depends exclusively on sea and/or air connections. Despite the potential environmental and social effects related to tourism, islands can successfully rise to the occasion and somehow contain or manage the negative impacts. This chapter discusses two case studies that have been successful in doing so, they are Gili Trawangan and Cape Breton Island.
