**6. Discussion**

Starting from a literature analysis, this article offers the principal dimensions and variables that can separately identify the two tourism models: IBTM and CBTM. Consequently, to understand the development of choices and patterns, this article analysed sixteen islands and archipelagos for the south European Union countries in ten years from 2010 to 2019. A panel data analysis was based on critical proxy variables for IBTM and CBTM. The principal component analysis was adopted to compare the evolutionary trends of these two different ways in the EU islands' tourism model adopted and followed.

According to the research question (Rq2), the data analysis identified two groups of islands: the first in the past ten years before COVID-19, following a planned and industrybased tourist model with an employment system and a relevant hospitality industry. Malta, La Réunion, Corse, Iles Baleares, Canarias, Azores, and Cyprus developed a reticulum of well-structured tourist industries centrally coordinated or managed (Baggio and Sainaghi 2011). This model proposes an industrial organisation that is place-based and able to generate at different levels the specialisation and agglomeration economies (Marshall 1994). The island's destination followed from 2010 until 2019, a demand driver approach based on external investments, international hotel chains, a consistent number of accommodation services, related services, flight connections, public services, and central policy coordination as a single tourism industry with some exceptions.

Tourism based on industry economies follows economic aspects and works for local economic increase, added value, and employment. Industrial tourism has its fair share of defects, such as unsustainability, over-tourism, and the lack of correct carrying-capacity studies that have led, in some places, to force fields between construction and infrastructural developments for tourism.

In contrast, the second group of selected islands, such as Voreio Aigaio, Notio Aigaio, Kriti, Sardegna, Região Autónoma da Madeira, Ionia Nisia, Sicilia, Guadeloupe, and Martinique, adopted and followed in ten years a spontaneous tourism model which is supply-driven and based on the local community and small or micro hospitality systems and with auto-entrepreneurship in tourism. For this group, the community-based approach to tourism is based on host–visitor activity in respect of the life quality of the host community, maintaining and guaranteeing economic support to self-managed activities. The community-based approach created an awareness of what sustainable and responsible tourism can offer all stakeholders regarding those economic and social aspects.
