Dependency and agency in peripheral tourism development

The notion of dependency provides useful insights into tourism’s relationships between peripheral and core regions. Overly simple applications of this idea can be deterministic, however, suggesting that tourism development inevitably entails exploitation of the periphery by the core. This study in peripheral tourism development in relation to human agency, strategic calculation and strategic selectivity. These relationships are evaluated for tourism’s core-periphery relations between a main island and a nearby smaller and more peripheral island. It was found that the peripheral island of Gozo exhibited dependency on the main island of Malta, but Gozo’s actors also exerted agency within various constraints. Consideration is given to both economic and political dimensions of these relationships.

► Dependency ideas provide useful insights into tourism’s relations between peripheries and cores.
► Overly simple applications of these ideas can imply that tourism invariably entails peripheral dependency and exploitation.
► Dependency can be important in tourism development, but there is also agency and strategic calculation.
► The peripheral island of Gozo exhibited much dependency on the main island of Malta in its tourism development.
► Yet actors based on Gozo exerted agency and strategic calculation over tourism development within various constraints.