Tourism policy and residents' well-being in Cyprus: Opportunities and challenges for developing an inside-out destination management approach

•A policy re-orientation for Cyprus tourism is needed that will have at its core local prosperity.•An ‘inside-out’ approach that considers locals’ prosperity helps to build a distinctive brand.•An ‘inside-out’ approach can redirect tourism policy to focus on alternative forms of tourism.

The paper explores how Cyprus can increase its competitiveness, sustaining its magnitude and attractive attributes, and ensuring residents’ well-being. The study evaluates the suitability of an ‘inside-out’ planning approach to island tourism development. Eleven interviews were conducted with tourism policy-makers and stakeholders complemented by documentary analysis of official policy sources. Findings indicate that Cyprus tourism policy addresses only indirectly residents’ well-being, and therefore a policy re-orientation focusing on local prosperity is needed. It is proposed that an ‘inside-out’ approach stemming from the kind of development that locals want for improving their quality of life can foster islands’ socio-cultural revitalisation. An ‘inside-out’ approach can redirect Cyprus tourism policy to focus on alternative forms of tourism such as rural/special interest tourism. However, to reconfigure its tourism product, Cyprus should remedy the ‘top-down’ and bureaucratic planning processes that create challenges for the sustainable development of tourism. The adoption of an ‘inside-out’ approach can enable ‘bottom-up’ decision-making by empowering residents to partake in local communities' tourism planning intending to improve life quality. Broadly, these conditions need to be further examined within the context of small island destinations in order to find the means for implementing their repositioning/rebranding driven by a local focus aimed at enhancing residents' well-being.