Island Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2013, pp. 84-104 Competing Notions of Diversity in Archipelago Tourism: Transport Logistics, Official Rhetoric and Inter-Island Rivalry in the Azores Godfrey Baldacchino University of Prince Edward Island, Canada & Visiting Professor, University of Malta, Malta & Visiting Professor, Università di Corsica Pasqual Paoli, France [email protected] & Eduardo Costa Duarte Ferreira University of the Azores, Portugal [email protected] Abstract: Contending and competing geographies are often implicitly involved in archipelagic spaces. Various small island states and territories with multi-island geographies have flourishing tourism industries that presuppose an archipelagic experience: visitors are encouraged to explore and sample different island constituents of the territory. This strategy taps into different tourism niche markets, improves local value added, and shares tourism revenue beyond key nodes and urban centers. The organization of such an important economic activity however often reflects a ‘one-size-fits-all’, tightly coordinated, frequently contrived process that does not necessarily speak to the cultural and biogeographical forms of diversity that reside in the archipelago. This paper offers the notion of archipelago as a new way of rethinking problems and challenges encountered in island tourism, and then assesses the implications of this conceptualization on the representation of ‘the archipelago’ in the Azores, Portugal, and reviews what this approach means and implies for sustainable tourism policy. Keywords: archipelago; Azores; brand consolidation; hub-and-spoke; islands; pluralism; rivalry; tourism © 2013 Institute of Island Studies, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. Introduction Imagine an island holiday that takes you to explore volcanic landscapes, watch whales, do adventure walks in tropical jungles, and sample cultural events in local village feasts. This is archipelago tourism: activities and events that take place on different islands sharing the same regional location, not necessarily belonging to the same country, and invariably incorporating inter-island travel by sea and/or air. It is a specific tourism experience not yet recognized as a specific policy area or field of academic inquiry. Indeed, “little has been written about the effects of geography on archipelagic nations” (Bethel, 2002, p. 240). “Islands and archipelagos pose unique challenges for tourism policy. While tourism development in islands is well studied, little attention has been given to archipelagos and their special challenges” (Bardolet and Sheldon, 2008, p. 900). Archipelago tourism in the Azores Various small island states and subnational island jurisdictions have opted for an enclave tourism policy that reduces or stems cultural pollution (think all-inclusive resorts); but, with their multi-island geographies, some have preferred a more even spread of tourists, and their economic benefits. The latter can involve archipelagic tourism strategies: visitors are encouraged to explore and sample different island constituents of the territory; there is often a deliberate attempt at product differentiation by the tourism authorities that seeks to appeal to different tourist types, and to suit different pockets. This strategy is intended mainly to boost the tourism experience, while maximizing visitations and length of stay, contributing to enhanced revenue generation. The focus here is on the management of diversity, and on how this condition can be expected to expand the impact, flavour and appeal of a particular tourist destination. But the plurality of an archipelago can be elusive; it may not easily lend itself to control and profiling; it may not fit submissively into tight historical or cultural compartments; it could defy coordination and organization; and it could express itself via a cacophony of voices, aspirations and identities that clash with the ‘official’, smart logo, brand, identity and history – rather than identities and histories – of the island group. “Each island, however small, tends to have a distinct history, certain unique cultural characteristics, and often its own language or dialect” (Hamilton-Jones, 1992, p. 200). Nor is the differentiation that exists within an archipelago necessarily and inherently island based: we err by essentializing islands if we assume so. Difference could rather be region, theme or product based, involving sub-island and/or multi-island units of analysis, with clubs or clusters, each with their own specific marketing strategies, combining and separating islands at will (e.g. Edwards, 2004, contrasting the north and south of Tenerife). Figure 1: An example of the visual representation of archipelagic tourism: the Islands of the Bahamas. Source: World Travel Market (2013). These difficulties can be camouflaged in official narratives about these island spaces, including those presented in attractive visual tones (see Figure 1). Marketing agencies can do some aesthetically wonderful work in celebrating island differences in complementary tones. The signal is one of synergy, a pleasant bouquet of island experiences that beckon visitors to practise “island hopping” (Bahamas Promotion, 2010), and come and sample as many islands as possible. After all, “every island has its own character, its own atmosphere and subtle differences in culture” (ibid.). And yet, to what extent are such discourses, and the harmony they infer, constructed and hyped versions of an altogether different practice: one driven by intense inter-island rivalries, one characterized by too similar island destinations competing for the same tourists, one where there are other differences between and within islands which may be socially and historically more relevant than what is officially portrayed, but which are dismissed as not appropriate or ‘incorrect’ for branding and marketing purposes? 85 G. Baldacchino & E. C. D. Ferreira In a recent seminal paper, it has been argued that an archipelago or ‘island-island’ relationality is a welcome alternative to both the ‘land-sea’ and ‘mainland-island’ approaches that have tended to dominate (in) island studies (Stratford, Baldacchino, McMahon, Farbotko, & Harwood, 2011). It is also suggested that there “is need ... to explore alternative cultural geographies and alternative performances, representations and experiences of islands” (ibid., p. 114). These alternative geographies and performances include the multiple ways in which ‘diversity’ can be represented, and managed in a particular archipelagic setting; and embrace the manner in which such representations align, or fail to align, with both techno-economic considerations of transport logistics as well as the socio-cultural understandings of islanders of their own internal status images, divisions and hierarchies. While diversity could be packaged as a form of comprehensive complementarity for branding purposes, it can clash rudely with both alternative home-grown conceptualizations of the life world, and with technoscapes deemed necessary to bring marketing strategies to fruition. This paper This paper developed after we had exchanged various e-mails in the run-up to a week-long international migration conference held in São Miguel, Azores, in September 2011. At that point, Godfrey Baldacchino (GB) was exploring the potential use of the concept of the archipelago as a heuristic device, offering an approach to island studies that privileged island- island relationalities. In the course of a week of conversations, this interest met the enthusiasm of Eduardo Costa Duarte Ferreira (ECDF): a PhD candidate looking at migration in the context of the Azorean archipelago. Together, they were quick to realize that this ‘archipelagic turn’ could help shed some critical light on tourism policy in the Azores. GB, who had twice been to the Azores before, was aware of some inter-island rivalries; thanks to ECDF, they were able to recognize these as symptomatic of a certain type of enduring inter-island difference: one that did not feature in the official positioning of the Azores as a diverse destination. The island identity was clearly significant: even the Azorean communities in the diaspora would tend to organize themselves around their island of origin, just as they would be most likely to return again to their island of origin should they decide to resettle home (e.g. Rocha et al., 2011; Teixeira, 2006; Teixeira & Murdie, 2009). This paper emerged from various conversations between its two authors, a focused literature scan of archipelago tourism (practically all of it in relation to specific islands or jurisdictions), information solicited from other colleagues working or based on archipelagos that are tourism destinations, and a set of six semi-structured interviews that ECDF conducted with stakeholders in the Azorean tourism industry during 2012 (see Appendix 1). The interviews (conducted in Portuguese) elicited respondent opinions about tourism policy of the Azores, the extent to which this was sensitive to both inter-island differences and similarities, and how these sensitivities (or lack thereof) impacted on the long-term sustainability of the industry for the island region. Forms of archipelago tourism Organizing archipelago tourism is an important economic activity, and especially so for warm water islands which, unlike their cold water cousins, have a considerable economic dependence on tourism (e.g. Baldacchino, 2006; 2013). This dependence however often conceals a tightly coordinated, top-down, centre-periphery logistic relationship. The typical and simplest state of 86 Archipelago tourism in the Azores affairs is the hub-and-spoke network model, found in several sectors of modern society, including road transportation, telecommunication, and aviation logistics (Horner & O’Kelly, 2011). In this scenario, as it applies to archipelagos, the central island (usually, the one with the location of the capital city and the bulk of the resident population) is often the only one with an international airport, or seaport: all visitors on commercial flights to ‘offshore’ islands must then transit through the main island or transit hub alongside. Inter-island links that do not involve the central hub are rare or non-existent, or rarely if ever advertised or communicated to visitors (see Figure 2). Figure 2: Schematic model of a hub-and-spoke systemic approach to transport management. Source: adapted from Coyle, Bardi, & Novack (1994, p. 402). This model has inherent advantages: it concentrates traffic, grouping passengers with the same travel origin but possibly different final destinations in ‘feeder flights’. It also concentrates the required infrastructure to/from one location, reaping economies of scale, and avoiding costly duplication. However, hubs potentially increase bottlenecks, such as arrival and departure delays and traffic congestion. Moreover, most visitors would then tend to spend their time, and money, in that same location, or use it as their base if and when they venture to other islands (e.g. Costa, Lohmann & Oliveira, 2010). Ironically, in this business model the branding of the offshore islands (and the vigorous affirmation of how different they are from the main island) is an exercise accomplished by central tourism agencies or state departments, and rarely by the offshore islands themselves or their representatives. Such is the general situation in the Seychelles (Indian Ocean) – where the international airport was opened in 1972; the Maldives (Indian Ocean) – airport opened in 1966; the Bahamas (Caribbean, in relation to its ‘family islands’); and Malta (in the Mediterranean, in relation to Gozo and depopulated Comino). Thus, the self-evident logistical and infrastructural dominance of the centre vis à vis the outer island(s) suggests a similar but more nuanced imposition by the centre/main island of the grand narrative that plays out for tourists about the different islands in the group. Archipelagic diversity yes; but on whose terms, and in whose words? After all, “narrative constructs … language has the capacity to make politics” (Hajer, 2006, pp. 66-67, emphasis in original). There is another set of pressures that tends to drive what may initially have been a classical ‘hub and spoke’ model into one where the different island constituents each develop their airport and/or seaport infrastructure. In democratic island societies, where representatives are elected from multiple island constituencies, and where the smallest islands may have a 87 G. Baldacchino & E. C. D. Ferreira disproportionately large influence on regional decision making, a series of policy decisions may come into play whose outcomes slowly but surely act to reproduce transport infrastructure, and develop direct flight and/or ferry connections to key national and international destinations, bypassing the erstwhile central island hub. Below is a partial and schematic review of a two archipelago tourism destinations, Hawai’i and Canaries, where this process has occurred. The material is merely illustrative and is not meant to constitute a representative sample. Hawai’i, USA In the US state of Hawai’i (Pacific), there are seven populated islands. All have airports, and four are designated as ‘international’: the main one in the capital of Honolulu on Oahu (the most heavily populated island and seat of state government); one on Maui; and two on Big Island (Hilo and Kona). These four airports are the main conduits for tourist visitations, largely from the continental US. Inter-island sea or air transport is common. Figure 3: Tourist Map of the US State of Hawai’i. Source: Go Hawaii (2012). Interestingly, the official representation of an island archipelago can go so far as to thoroughly erase one or more of its constituent members: since tourists cannot visit, it does not exist. Thus, two of the central islands in the Hawaiian archipelago are omitted from the tourist map found on the state tourism portal (see Figure 3). One is the sacred and uninhabited island of Kaho’olawe; the US military used it for target practice for many years, and there is still a danger of unexploded ordnance on the island (Ollhoff, 2009, p. 25). The other is privately owned Ni`ihau, a haven for Niihau natives, who can have no contact with tourists, and a site for US military testing (e.g. Capos, 2012). Canary Islands, Spain Even more devolved is the Spanish Atlantic archipelago of the Canaries. The seven populated islands (with some two million residents) have different histories and benefit from very different physical geographies, sometimes with contrasts on the same island: this positions them towards different tourist market segments. There are currently four international airports: one on Fuerteventura, one on Gran Canaria, and two on Tenerife. A strategic plan recently commissioned by the Regional Government of the Canary Islands appeals for a greater respect 88 Archipelago tourism in the Azores for, and stronger consolidation of, an overall Canary brand. Any exploitation of differences within the archipelago needs to be carefully managed within a simple but effective marketing strategy that puts the focus on the Canaries as a whole, and as the provider of a multiple tourism product. This strategy would require more resource consolidation at the hands of the regional government. The island councils (los cabildos), however, and perhaps not surprisingly, disagree: these have their own tourism strategic plans, and archipelago issues do not feature prominently (for example, for Tenerife, Estrategia Tourista de Tenerife, 2008). The archipelago is also long subject to a historical rivalry between the two largest and most populated islands, Gran Canaria and Tenerife, each of which is now the seat of a distinct province (as well as two distinct universities). Nevertheless, visual and official cues reflect edits that are common across both official and tourism driven representations of archipelagos: the seven main islands are accorded equal status as members of the region on official maps; and they are often represented as being closer and less diverse in size than they actually are (see Figures 4a and 4b). Figure 4a: ‘We have seven islands to show you’: tourism-driven representations of the Canarian archipelago. Source: Source: Exposition entitled: Souvenir! La Colección de[los] turistas, Tenerife and Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain, 2012. Figure 4b: Actual (to scale) map of the Canary Islands. Source: Wikimedia Commons Enter the Azores The Azores is a Portuguese subnational island jurisdiction in the mid-Atlantic Ocean with some 247,000 inhabitants, spread over 600 km of ocean along a general WNW-ESE strip (see Figures 5a & 5b); it presents itself as an even more diverse archipelagic configuration. The islands, an overseas region of the European Union, were ranked second out of 111 world island destinations for sustainable tourism. This report card states that “locals are very sophisticated” 89 G. Baldacchino & E. C. D. Ferreira (National Geographic, 2007: 110). We argue that the depth and sophistication of Azorean culture is more than meets the eye, and certainly more than the official narratives suggest. Except for Bardolet and Sheldon (2008), we are not aware of any academic studies that have specifically adopted an archipelagic outlook towards the understanding of tourism among the several islands of the Azores: in fact, not a single entry for ‘archipelago’ appears in the keyword index for all 38 volumes of the Annals of Tourism Research – a leading scholarly tourism journal - published during 1973-2011 (Xiao, 2012). Figures 5a (left) and 5b (right): The Azorean archipelago, and its location in the Atlantic Ocean (marked with a circle) and with respect to Portugal (in green) and the rest of the European Union (in blue) of which the Azores forms part. Source: Tour Azores (2010). Figure 6: Nine Stars of Equal Size: Flag of the Azorean Autonomous Regional Government. Source: Autonomous Regional Government of the Azores. All the Azorean ‘great green ships’ (after Updike, 1964), or the nine populated islands – each represented by an equally-sized star on the region’s flag, and equidistant from one other (Figure 6) – have airports, but three are main international exemplars: the main one just outside Ponta Delgada, on the island of São Miguel; the other two at Lajes, on the island of Terceira, and at Horta, on the island of Faial. Explaining part of this different archipelagic character are long running tensions between the two main cities of the archipelago – Ponta Delgada, the capital, and, on Terceira, Angra do Heroísmo, a UNESCO world heritage city, closer to the centre of physical gravity of the scattered island group. In the Azores, Ponta Delgada may be the administrative capital, but the Regional Assembly and Regional Tourist Board are located in Horta; the judiciary and the Roman Catholic diocese are located in Angra do Heroísmo. 90 Archipelago tourism in the Azores Lending weight to the decentralization that may be inferred from such an institutional fragmentation is the demographic data. Ponta Delgada only contains around 25% of the total resident population of the Azores, reflecting the region’s scattered population. Compare this figure to 30% for Victoria, Mahé Island, in relation to the Seychelles; 30% for Honolulu in relation to the state of Hawai’i; 33% in Male in relation to the Maldives; 60% for Nassau/New Providence in relation to the Bahamas as a whole; and 92% for mainland Malta in relation to the Maltese archipelago (Malta, Gozo and Comino). The distribution of the population of the Azores by island (Table 1). Table 1: Azorean Population Distribution by Island: 1981–2011. Source: Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Censos, 1981, 1991, 2001, 2011. 1981 1991 2001 2011 Santa Maria 6,500 5,922 5,578 5,552 São Miguel 131,908 125,915 131,609 137,856 Terceira 53,570 55,706 55,833 56,437 Graciosa 5,377 5,189 4,780 4,391 Sao Jorge 10,361 10,219 9,674 9,171 Pico 15,483 15,202 14,806 14,148 Faial 15,489 14,920 15,063 14,994 Flores 4,352 4,329 3,995 3,793 Corvo 370 393 425 430 AZORES 243,410 237,795 241,763 246,772 The location of the three main international airports corresponds to the islands with the three largest capacity for tourist accommodation: Sao Miguel, Terceira and Faial (Moniz, 2009: 324). This pattern of unequal distribution of hotels and other accommodation facilities is further skewed by its urban bias: more than half of all beds in the Azores are to be found in Ponta Delgada (49%) and Angra do Heroísmo (11%) (Serviço Regional de Estatística dos Açores, 2011). In any case, what is clear is that demographic statistics, hotel stock and tourism visitation numbers (about which more below) present a picture of diversity and inequality that official discourse seeks to camouflage and tone down. It is not just the flag that renders each of the nine islands of equal size; souvenirs can also represent the island group in a way that both reduces the relative difference in the size of the islands, and also shortens the physical distances between them (Figure 7; compare this to the map in Figure 5a). 91 G. Baldacchino & E. C. D. Ferreira Figure 7: Closer distances, more equal sizes: a ceramic plate souvenir from the Azores. Source: photograph by Godfrey Baldacchino. Data and its challenges Of course, one of the difficulties in undertaking any empirical studies to assess the nature and dynamics of archipelago tourism concerns the quality of available data. Island states (Bahamas, Malta, Seychelles) and subnational island jurisdictions (Azores, Canaries, Hawai’i) at least have a state or sub-state regional identity; this means that authorities regularly measure tourist arrivals (and departures), which are then reported in regional statistics. Visitation statistics per island may also be available. If the data collecting methodologies do not change over time, then such trend data is comparable across various years. The main difficulties arise with the proper identification of who is the ‘tourist’. First of all, not all passengers on international flights are tourists. Many could be local residents, which could include expatriates with non-Portuguese passports returning home from trips abroad. Second, and typical for small island territories, there is a significant overseas Azorean diaspora, which visits its homeland regularly – indeed, this is one of the main reasons that there are direct international flights to the Azores from Boston, Oakland and Providence (USA), Toronto (Canada), Frankfurt and Munich (Germany), London (United Kingdom) and Amsterdam (The Netherlands) (Azores Web, 2012). Many Azorean émigrés may live overseas and maintain a Portuguese/European Union passport: they would easily remain excluded from tourism statistics. Third, there are many international passengers travelling on domestic flights, arriving in the Azores from Porto or Lisbon, on the Portuguese mainland. Fourth, the Azores benefits from considerable domestic tourism: mainland Portuguese or Madeirans visit the islands. Fifth, various international flights transit in the Azores, coming, say, from Canada or the USA and heading on to Lisbon or to Porto as their final destination. Their passengers are not necessarily visiting the Azores. Finally, the status of passengers does not disclose the 92 Archipelago tourism in the Azores purpose of their visit: not all may be tourists in the narrow sense of the word: some may be students, or workers, or traveling on business. Mainly for these reasons, we have decided against collating data based on airplane passenger arrival statistics. We have instead looked more closely at the statistics pertaining to foreign visitors (non- nationals) staying in Azorean hotels (Table 2). This approach eliminates the inclusion of tourists who may have family and/or friends in the Azores, perhaps even a second home, and would therefore be tourists but not lodged in hotels. In any case, these visitors are much more likely to be Portuguese nationals or members of the Portuguese overseas diaspora. Moreover, anonymous accommodation statistics do not reveal if tourists are engaging in inter-island travel. Nevertheless, our approach likely provides a valid indicator of the spread of international tourist arrivals over time; and the extent to which this sheds light on the nature of Azorean tourism. The data presented as Table 2 allows some interesting observations. First, the ‘hub-and-spoke’ model remains dominant: international tourist traffic to São Miguel dwarfs that to all the other islands. Second, the situation in the four other ‘gateway’ islands suggests a vague convergence: but Pico has been steadily losing visitors until 2009; Terceira is only recently recovering after a peak in 2007; Faial has been doing well since 2003; and Santa Maria, because it is starting from a very low base, is gaining tourist visitors fastest of all. Table 2: Number of foreign visitors (non-nationals) staying in Azorean hotels, by island with a gateway: 2001–2011. Source: Servicio Nacional de Estatística de Açores, http://estatistica.azores.gov.pt 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 São 56,329 53,820 58,671 74,751 103,886 104,403 99,784 96,442 93,099 98,835 100,382 Miguel Terceira 8,381 8,925 10,807 12,567 14,829 13,912 16,233 15,001 13,768 12,028 18,743 Faial 8,268 7,610 6,990 9,720 10,136 12,235 11,534 11,230 10,926 12,199 16,423 Pico 6,213 6,054 5,879 5,524 5,290 6,014 4,701 4,223 3,745 4,638 9,345 Santa 1,199 910 1,035 1,545 1,474 1,890 1,778 2,064 2,349 2,701 3,974 Maria Now, to what extent do these figures suggest that the Azorean archipelago is living up to its name and welcoming multi-island visitations? The Regional Government has certainly been making a pitch in favour of such a practice: One of the greatest assets is the archipelagic condition … a touristic experience ... on the basis of two or more islands is generally a richer and more satisfying experience than a tourist experience based on one island. Our mystique is more evident when we are understood in our insular plurality and archipelagic dimension (Regional Government of the Azores, 2008: 169). 93