**3. Islands Tourism and Planning**

The European Union (EU) tourist islands in south Europe are more than 100 and belong to six EU state members. However, despite the diversity and uniqueness of each island, these territories share the same permanent handicaps because of their insularity (Briguglio and Kisanga 2004). The EU has recognised this condition as both a geo-cultural factor and a permanent handicap because of additional constraints on competitiveness in the areas concerned and is seen as the main reason for the formulation of specific policies addressed to these territories. It has led to the insular areas being identified as regions that suffer from severe or permanent natural or demographic handicaps. It is necessary to adopt specific measures to reduce disparities between the levels of development of the various regions and the backwardness of the least favoured regions.

In contrast to these difficulties, EU tourist islands experience strong demand for high levels of tourism consumption with positive effects on local employment and production. Tourism in islands tends to be central to the local economy. However, the islands cannot all be placed at the same stage of tourism development (Butler 1980) because destinations coexist at various stages of development. This makes it impossible to formulate strategic guidelines for sustainable development that are valid and generally applicable on all islands (Baldacchino 2006; Fairbairn 2007). It is, therefore, necessary to start with a comparative analysis of tourism in the islands to develop the most appropriate tourism policies for the territory concerned. Table 3 shows the statistical indicators for the islands.

**Table 3.** The islands' panel dimensions.


Source: data analysis on OTIE islands database.
