Slow Tourism at the Caribbean's Geographical Margins

Abstract

The Caribbean tourism industry owes much of its success to beneficial geograph ical site and situation factors. Yet these geographical advantages have also contributed to the mass tourism-related pressures of economic dependency, social division and environmental degradation. We argue geographically marginal locales in the Caribbean have the potential to develop alternative tourism models that ameliorate these negative repercussions. With its conceptual roots originating from the slow food movement and theoretically rooted in Herman Daly's 'soft growth' development, we propose slow tourism as a viable soft growth model that is a more culturally sensitive and sustainable genre of alternative tourism. This new model and its locational appropriateness appears eminently suitable since it diversifies and revitalizes mature tourism offerings, redirects tourism away from 'hard growth' maxims, and thereby contributes to more sustainable tourism ensembles. In a maturing industry that requires in novation, revitalization and significant change in offerings if it is to survive and prosper, we argue the best places to promote slow tourism lies in the Caribbean's overlooked geographical margins where diversity and authenticity still persist.

Slow Tourism: Exploring the discourses

“…It can apply to a trend away from conventional tourism (World Travel Market, 2007), an adopted identity (Dickinson, Robbins and Lumsdon, 2010;Smith, 2012), conscious ethical decisions (Fullagar, Wilson and Markwell, 2012), motivations for holiday choices (McGrath and Sharpley, 2016;Oh, Assaf and Baloglu, 2014), types of accommodation (Matos, 2004) or destination (Caffyn, 2012;Timms and Conway, 2012) as well as a description of fundamental changes needed in the organisation of tourism for social justice and environmental sustainability (Hall, 2009). Pinning down exactly what it means is difficult and perhaps should not be attempted: "You can kill the thing you love by trying to define it."…”

Development of Slow Tourism Challenge and Operation Architecture: A Case Study on Green Island, Taiwan

“…A lot of researchers supported the effects of slow food movement on slow tourism (Aall 2014;Bâc 2013;Dickinson and Lumsdon 2010;Hall 2006;Timms and Conway 2011). In addition to the dissatisfaction with and the accusation of fast food, slow food movement primarily opposed the standardization of savor and culture (Bâc 2013).…”

Rail travel: Conceptualizing a study on slow tourism approaches in sustaining rural development

“…In this study, the slow concept is highly regarding the transport mode chosen while on holiday. Comparing to the airplane, train is a more convenient and a practical transport to choose, especially for distances of less than 800 kilometres [2].…”

“…Many researches that have been conducted on this topic spans on the likes of definition [1], Savelli's types of slow tourist [2] and how slow tourism works in a popular tourist destination such as Caribbean [3] . However, there are very few researches that are being conducted on the perception and mind set of tourists of a country to pursue slow tourism.…”