Economic and social resilience accounts for the recovery of Ibiza's tourism sector

Abstract

Islands tend to offer almost everything needed to become a tourist destination, such as good weather, beaches and landscapes, but it also requires the provision of competitively priced transport services, lodging and entertainment. This supply is not possible without a competent business community and a social consensus able to cope with the downsides of tourism development for the local population. Both of these two elements were present in Ibiza in the nineteen-thirties, when the island became a key tourist destination. The growth of Ibiza's tourism sector was interrupted by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, followed by the Second World War and subsequently by several years of total isolation. The island's tourism began a robust revival in 1950 and rose to become one of the leading destinations for mass tourism in the nineteen-sixties. This extraordinary resilience was built on the recovery of previously accumulated physical, human and social capital and on the capacity of the local business community to reinvent their product and adapt it to new circumstances. Ascertaining the foundations of this resilience is the central aim of this study. Consequently, the following methodology and tools of economic history are used: demand analysis, identification of capital sources and professional skills, and origins of applied innovations. The study also employs the concept of attractors, which is borrowed from the field of evolutionary ecology.