Telecommunication and tourism development: an island perspective

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to investigate the availability and contribution of destinations’ telecommunication structure and development on tourism development for the case of the small island economy of Mauritius.

Design/methodology/approach

The research uses annual data from 1992 to 2017 in a dynamic econometric setting, namely, an autoregressive distributed lag model to take into account the time series properties of the data.

Findings

Analysis of the results showed that telecommunication has contributed positively, albeit to a lesser extent as compared to other classical determinants, to tourist development in both the short and long run. In addition, the relatively high income elasticity also suggests that Mauritius is considered as a luxurious destination. Tourists were found to be sensitive to the relative prices and cost of the destination, tourism infrastructure and the island’s development level. Finally, the study confirms the presence repeat tourism on the island.

Practical implications

The result clearly provides support to the Government’s strategy to pursue an accelerated investment in telecommunication infrastructure and also to give further incentives to private operators to promote innovation and enhanced connectivity. It is recognised that the positive effect of telecommunication on the tourism industry relies on a national enabling telecommunication environment which is multi facet in nature, relying on to a large extent on infrastructure, access, capacity building and the legal framework among others.

Originality/value

The study is believed to supplement the literature by analysing the telecommunication–tourism link in a direct way as existing studies have largely discussed the link indirectly. Moreover, it uses a classical international demand for tourism model, augmented with a measure of telecommunication, and uses recent dynamic time series econometric framework to account for the existence of dynamism in tourism modelling. Finally, the research brings additional evidences from an island economy perspective (heavily tourist dependent and geographically remote), often neglected by the related literature which has focused mainly on developed countries.

Citation

Seetanah, B. (2019), "Telecommunication and tourism development: an island perspective", Tourism Review, Vol. 74 No. 4, pp. 815-829. https://doi.org/10.1108/TR-08-2018-0117