and Twitter), online communities (e.g., Facebook, RenRen, and TripAdvisor), media sharing sites (e.g., Flickr and YouTube), social bookmarking sites (e.g., Delicious), social knowledge sharing sites (e.g., Wikitravel), and other tools in a collaborative way.” (p.4).

Digital information may increase tourism competition among tourism destinations, and among tourism service providers within tourism destinations, which might benefit consumers. Moreover, the Internet may reduce inequality among tourism providers, giving all involved the chance to promote their services on an equal basis. The evidence is scattered.<sup>5</sup> However, most econometric analysis shows that providers (i.e., hotels) do respond to consumer valuation. Ye et al. (2009) find that “results indicate a significant relationship between online consumer reviews and business performance of hotels.” (p.1). Xie et al. (2014) state that “The results show that overall rating, attribute ratings of purchase value, location and cleanliness, variation and volume of consumer reviews, and the number of management responses are significantly associated with hotel performance.” (p.1). Standing et al. (2014) clearly attribute this shift of power to the information technologies: “Indeed, it is argued the Internet has facilitated a shift of power from travel providers to consumers since they now have access to a wide range of travel providers on the Internet that often compete on price (Law et al., 2010). New travel intermediaries have become a recognized force in the industry and tourism destinations have embraced the Internet for promotion and marketing. The use of Internet purchasing of travel products and the growth in numbers of people with Internet access has led to continued growth in travel consumers (Ramos & Rodrigues, 2010). These consumers are continually developing in terms of their needs for information, and research should evolve in terms of the areas of focus to address practitioner concerns and requirements.”

# **IIc. Transport and connectivity**

<mark>Geographical proximity and cultural affinity positively influence tourism demand especially for small islands. The literature survey of McElroy and Parry (2010) clearly identifies geographic proximity as the main factor explaining the tourism attractiveness of small islands, followed by dependent, colonial, or political status and uncrowded island ambience. In fact, the same factors are observed by Coscia, Hausman and Neffke (2016) using anonymized and aggregated foreign transaction data from credit card expenditures: distance, a country’s reported wealth, and cultural afinity in</mark> affecting tourism demand.

<mark>Increased airlift connectivity benefits the destination country and the inbound tourists. The evidence on the effect of airlift supply is clear: more airlift benefits any tourism destination (see, for instance, the review and the econometric evidence for the Caribbean of Acevedo et al., 2016). Another issue is that more airlift supply should increase competition among airlines for a destination, and as such, it should be expected that less money would be spent on transportation</mark>

> 5 Of theoretical relevance is the question of whether, as more islands participate in the informational game, competition among them may be used strategically by agents to capture rents. For instance, Zhang et al. (2016) indicate that expert reviews influence consumer ratings. As such, information might be manipulated by the bigger players, a concern that the recent focus on digital platforms such as Facebook clearly illustrates.

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