The impact of hurricane strikes on cruise ship and airplane tourist arrivals in the Caribbean

Abstract

We investigate the impact of hurricanes on airplane and cruise ship arrivals in the Caribbean. To this end, we construct a monthly panel of airline and cruise ship arrivals and hurricane destruction and employ a panel vector autoregressive model with an exogenous shock (VARX) to quantify the dynamic effects of tourist arrivals after a hurricane for 18 Caribbean countries over the period 2000–2013. The results suggest an immediate decline in the month of a strike and up to one month after on cruise ship (2.33 and 1.21 percentage points) and airplane (0.57 and 0.27 percentage points) arrivals. Moreover, a strong recovery in airplane arrivals in months 3–6 following a hurricane was sufficient to induce a net positive effect of around 2 percentage points of total tourist arrivals into the region.

Disaster and risk management in outdoor recreation and tourism in the context of climate change

“…The increased incidence of typhoons or tropical storms due to climate change in coastal destinations obviously puts tourists at risk. Research has shown that cruise ships and airplanes were both negatively affected by the incidence of hurricanes at popular tourist destinations, such as the Caribbean and the Canary Islands (Carballo Chanfón et al , 2021; Yanes Luque et al , 2021). In addition, changes in climate, for instance increased temperature, may also result in conditions like intense heat waves that reduce comfort for tourists (Matzarakis et al , 2013).…”

Exploring the motivations for rural tourism in China during the COVID-19: The existence of a single motivation

“…For destinations devastated by natural disasters, the most striking feature is generally a decrease in tourist arrivals [34][35][36]. Tourists generally prefer to travel with their close family or friends after a natural disaster [37], and their perception of risk varies according to socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and education [38]. In addition, tourists' familiarity with the destination also influences their perception of risk, which in turn affects their travel needs and decisions.…”

Climate Change, Hurricanes, and Sovereign Debt in the Caribbean Basin

“…Several recent studies explore the implications of this damage to various aspects of economic activity. This includes Caribbean hurricanes' impacts on incomes and GDP (e.g., Strobl, 2012;and Campbell and Spencer, 2021) on proxies for GDP such as nightlights (Bertinelli and Strobl, 2013;; their historical impact on trade, particularly sugar trade, and trade flows more generally (Mohan and Strobl, 2013;Mohan, 2023;Bensassi et al, 2017); their impact on households' incomes and asset holdings (Jakobsen, 2012;Henry et al, 2020); their impact on important economic sectors such as agriculture (Mohan, 2017;Gassebner et al, 2010;Spencer and Polachek, 2015;Mohan and Strobl, 2017), and tourism (Carballo et al, 2023); their impact on financial indicators such as international reserves , prices (Heinen et al, 2019), and banking sector stability (Brei et al, 2019); and their effect on fiscal accounts (Ouattara et al, 2018;Mohan and Strobl, 2021). Nevertheless, Mohan et al (2018) report that there is significant heterogeneity in the impact of storms on some of the various macroeconomic aggregates identified above, even within the relatively narrow context of the Caribbean Island countries.…”