Peripheries of the periphery: Tourism in Tobago and Barbuda

Abstract

Using the two Caribbean archipelagic states of Trinidad and Tobago and Antigua and Barbuda as case studies, this paper explores the interaction between tourism and the internal core-periphery relationships which exist between dominant and subordinate islands. It was found that Antigua functions as a tourism facilitating internal core in that its role in Barbudan tourism is limited to the facilitation of foreign involvement in the sector. Trinidad, in contrast, because of its greater wealth, has functioned as a tourism participatory internal core, wherein significant involvement in Tobago is extended to include the generation of domestic tourists and tourism investment. In these cases, tourism was identified as a centrifugal force which both reflects and amplifies existing core-periphery relationships.