Tourism development in LDCs: hotel capacity expansion with reference to Barbados

In: World development: the multi-disciplinary international journal devoted to the study and promotion of world development

Abstract

This paper proposes a methodology for determing optimal hotel capacity, which is applied to the case of Barbados for the period 1979-84. It is concluded that overbuilding did occur among luxury hotels over the period. Gains to other tourism sectors very likely compensated for losses, but the offsetting is not expected to continue in the future due to rising construction costs