Tourism: A successful Caribbean development strategy

The emergence of tourism as the dominant industry in many Caribbean nations has generated much research on the success of such a strategy on the growth and development of these economies. Much of the empirical research, however, has focused on the industry’s contribution to economic growth as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), employment creation, foreign exchange accumulation and Governments’ revenues. To date, very few empirical studies have been conducted on the contribution of the tourism industry to the development of the quality of life of the region’s citizens. It is from this perspective that a cross-country regression model is utilized to investigate the connection between Caribbean tourism performance and the overall human development of the region. The study begins with a historical overview of the performance of the tourism industry in the Caribbean. Section three identifies the major links between tourism and human development. Section four discusses the data and presents the empirical model to test those links. This is followed by a presentation of the results of the model in Section five. Section six attempts to show that tourism, through its contribution to human development, contributes towards the sustainability of the region’s economic performance. The paper concludes finally with a brief summary in Section seven.