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.

Exploring and Evaluating the Impact of ICTs on Culture and Tourism Industries’ Convergence: Evidence from China

“…It is worth indicating that academic research in this specific field is rare; thus, there are only very few similar studies to which we could compare and contrast the present study's findings. Although recent studies (i.e., Shehzad et al [53]; Seetanah [54]; Kumar and Kumar [55]; Adeola and Evans [56]; Lorente-Bayona et al [13]; Gholipour et al [57]) performed empirical examinations to explain ICT's influence on tourism economy from various perspectives, their focus was on ICTs' effect on international tourism arrivals or international tourism expenditure, not on the cultural and tourism industries' convergence. In other words, their findings demonstrated that ICTs have a positive influence on international tourism demand.…”

“…It was indicated that the adoption of ICTs boosted tourism development, and consequently, economic growth. The study by Seetanah [54] employed the international tourism demand function and ARDL-ECM estimation to test the impact of telecommunications on tourism development in Mauritius. A positive correlation was found between them in both the short and long term.…”

“…The first variable, information and communication technology (ICTit), is seen as the fundamental factor driving the convergence between two industries [24,25,59]. Authors (i.e., Naudé and Saayman [66], Seetanah [54], Adeola and Evans [56], and Lorente-Bayona et al [13]) tended to use internet penetration rate as a proxy for ICTs, which is the proportion of internet users to the total population of each province/region. The internet penetration rate not only reflects the level of informatization/digitalization to a certain extent but also effectively addresses the deviation of results caused by alternative pricerelated indicators.…”

FDI and Trade Openness in the Tourism Market in Asian Emerging Market Economies

“…Reference [38] examined the accessibility and influence of a destination country"s telecommunication pattern and its progress on tourism growth in small island nations (1992-2017). The estimated results showed that telecommunications have contributed positively to tourism development.…”

Use of machine learning technology for tourist and organizational services: high-tech innovation in the hospitality industry

“…According to Jia et al (2019), in current years, technological development and internet networking have brought the advantage of monitoring methods and data collection through mobile application, online review, video investigation, comments and other resources. This revelation starts at the end of the 1970s through the founding of the computer reservation systems and continues in the late 1980s with global distribution systems and finally in the 1990s followed by the development of internet (Seetanah, 2019).…”